Remove chassis of HP laptop

Hey guys,
I'm having some overheating issues with my laptop and I was told by a repairer at the laptop service centre that I needed to clean out the heatsink of the laptop, and to do that I would need to open the chassis of the laptop (this was over the phone and he didn't tell me how).

So how do I take it off? It's a HP DV9008TX laptop.

Also what has JUST happened is the screen is ridiculously spastic and is now just showing static (no actual pictures). Would that be video card or monitor related? Happens even once the laptop is cooled down (this really sucks because Uni starts back up again tomorrow and I'd really like my lappy for it lol)

 

Here is the link to your Owners service manual it is in section 5.25.

 

A dv9000 series is a bit too recent to have a clogged heatsink, though it's possible. It's more likely that your notebook is on this list:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?docname=c01087277&dlc=en&lc=en&cc=us

and your notebook is failing due to heat stress, if that screen static you're seeing doesn't go away when the notebook cools down. Plug in an external monitor to confirm whether it's the onboard video or the screen but it sure sounds like a motherboard issue.

 

Ok I'm a 'lil confused right now:

I started to disassemble it without the instructions (this was before your post linking to the manual). Got the keyboard out, speaker cover thing out and had the monitor off (still all the cables connected though) and I thought I was starting to get a bit in over my head, so I put everything back and put all of the screws back in - Thankfully I wasn't short one and there weren't any left over.

Then I turned on the laptop and no luck - screen still just showed white with a bit of black, and slowly getting dark.

I thought "I'll plug in the other monitor I have to see if it gets to windows and shows up on there"

So I did that, and it boots up fine not only on the external monitor but on the laptop monitor as well... I'm kind of confused and I disconnect the monitor - laptop screen stays the same. Ok then fine maybe it's fixed now yay. Turn the laptop off, turn it back on and bam white screen... Again turn it off, plug monitor, turn on and it works... Now I'm freaked out. I turn off, disconnect monitor, turn back on and now the laptop screen works, and boots into windows fine, everything looks perfect.

CONFUSED!

So in summary, laptop stopped working, screen screwed up majorly.
Plug in external monitor, laptop screen works perfectly.
Disconnect external monitor, laptop screen dies.
Plug in external monitor, laptop screen works perfectly.
Disconnect external monitor, laptop screen works perfectly...

Btw I checked that product number thing and unfortunately it isn't on that list. This kind of sucks because the laptop is only 25 days out of warranty.

 

Go into display properties and make sure everthing is set up correctly. Also start in safe mode, does it work then? If you uninstall display drivers and force Windows to find and reinstall. These are guesses but can't really hurt.

If I read correct your
LCD works (at least somtimes) so not the screen itself being bad.
External Monitor works, sounds like card works then.

If you uninstall GPU drivers and things work fine then likely a driver issue with GPU. So reinstall.

Edit: And unfortunately brianstretch sounds like he might be onto something.

 

Can't be a software issue, because it's a problem that happens straight away, not once I get to Windows but even in the BIOS...

But regarding what you said:
LCD Works - yes
Ext Monitor works - yes
GPU software is fine in Windows if I can get past the BIOS
Even now the graphics card is working fine, and I don't know why it wasn't working before :X

 

OK so I'm pretty sure that the graphics chip is screwed, and that means new motherboard time... I checked the HP website and it says a new motherboard off them is about $700... Anyone know a cheaper alternative like getting an OEM motherboard or something like that?

 

Can you change (flash) the BIOS in the GPU? I did a lot of reading on this. Can you do? Just asking.

 

I don't know if I can... Would you be able to tell me how it's done?

Sometimes it can boot to Windows but it's rare

 

eBay is usually the best place to check for replacement parts. There's a pretty good market for broken notebooks there too, if you'd rather let someone else mess with it.

Installing the latest graphics card drivers will sometimes flash in new GPU firmware while it's at it. See if there's an update, or worst case just reinstall the version you have, if you can get your machine to boot again.

 

Yeah it never boots any mroe - thoroughly clucked i believe. New motherboard was $750AUD off Aus HP website - ~$400US off the US one... how that works i have no idea.

Anyways yeah I'm thinking I'll salvage some of the parts from this laptop, and then just buy an EeePC - that seems like my best option. Chuck in the RAM, use the hard drive as the external storage, see if I can get an enclosure for the laptop DVD drive, sell the other hard drive, sell the CPU etc stuff like that. Sound like a good idea to sell it all separately, or is it better off just selling a "HP Laptop with Broken Motherboard"