HP Pavilion DV6500 Reboot Loop

I have a client that brought me their HP Pavilion DV6500 laptop (Windows Vista Home Premium edition) that seems to have a severe issue.

When you attempt to power it up the lights above the keyboard all light up and you can hear the hard-drive spin up but then it reboots itself and begins a continuous reboot cycle. Nothing at all appears on the screen ever. The DVD/CD drive spins up momentarily (indicated by the yellow LED) but powers off when the laptop reboots itself (as one would expect).

The only way to stop the continuous rebooting is to press & hold the ESC key; this prevents the computer from rebooting, the lights stay on, but nothing appears on the screen and the DVD/CD drive will not read the recovery disc(s).

I have taken the following trouble-shooting steps:
1) Unplugged the unit from AC power & removed the battery. I was sure to hold in the power button for 30 seconds to ensure the capacitors were properly drained. This reset did not fix the issue.
2) I reseated the RAM and switched the RAM sticks (there are two of them) in trying to determine if it is a RAM issue; no affect with this attempt either.
3) Have attempted to boot into SAFE-MODE many times with no luck.

Any suggestions or is the unit now a door stop?

 

You're not able to get into BIOS Setup either? If you can, run the HD test program.

But I suspect that you can't, in which case I also suspect that you have yet another defective NVIDIA GPU.

 

Its probably toast, but you only tried the recovery cd's...have you tried a vista anywhere cd? I doubt its a OS issue because of the reboots but if ya have a vista cd handy it may be worth a try. The recovery cd's have had a hit and miss issue for some. The thing that concerns me is the constant reboot which sounds to me like the NVIDIA meltdown issue with nothing displayed on the screen it sounds like a motherboard issue.

Good Luck,

/Reby

 

It may be worth a try to swap out the DVD Player. My dv9000 won't boot to any CD/DVD. I think the hardware SATA interface may be going bad, or the device itself. Either way, I believe it is a hardware problem preventing me from booting to a CD.

It definitely does sound like a NVIDIA GPU failure. Tell your client it is a $1200 paperweight and offer to "Bake" the Motherboard for them

 

Yes it's a failed nVidia chip. I had a dv9420 come in with exactly the same problem. Baking the board fixed it though. Mmmm, nVidia flavored steak.

 

Smells like not only his Video chip is fried. The motherboard as well... I believe HP Mobo video card even for the dedicated one are integrated into the board. Not like old Dell laptop, GPU is a separated piece.

reason I say this because if it's only the videocard. Your computer shouldn't reboot. It will just stay on forever without displaying anything.

 

The dedicated ones are soldered on the same board and not removable, yes. But even if it is integrated into the chipset, baking the board or heating the chip using a hot air gun will work. The laptop i was talking about had a Go6150 so it was built into the chipset.

 

Poop! That's what I was afraid of (mobo/GPU failure).
I GREATLY appreciate all of your input into this problem. Working on laptops is fairly new to me as I generally deal with desktop PCs so I'm in the 'learning curve'.
In answer to some of the questions posted above:
BIOS: There is no way to get into the BIOS settings for 1) the screen displays nothing at all (not even a cursor) so I wouldn't even know if I was on the BIOS menu or not; and 2) the rebooting happens so quickly that catching it at just the right moment would be impossible.

VISTA Anywhere: I don't have a Vista Anywhere disc nor another DVD/CD drive to swap out the old one. I'm kinda stuck with the original hardware on this one.

I do have a question regarding 'baking' the mobo. I checked the Internet & YouTube and saw how it was done but have any of you had success with this procedure?

 

I found this guide a couple days ago:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=437683

I believe this should have plenty of information for you to try this, if you so desire. More labrats are always welcome, as I think I'll be doing this in the very near future. My HP laptop has cancer, and it is dieing very slowly.

 

It worked for me. 210C, 7 minutes. Cover everything but chipset/GPU in aluminum foil, and put 4 foil balls under the mobo so it does not touch the cooking tray. Fixed other things too such as my N73 cellphone's board (no more random shutdowns!).

 

Ok, I'll give it a shot - at this point there is nothing to lose.

Thanks for the article on how to do this and I also saw a video on YouTube that showed a guy doing it; so I feel I can pull it off. I realize this isn't a 100% sure thing and my client knows it too (I called to let him know and got his permission).

I will report back and let you know how it went.

Wish me luck!

 

Be careful when you pull it out, any bump to the tray while the solder is still hot will most likely send some SMDs flying. Allow 30 minutes to cool before reassembling. And you should do the copper shim mod while you're at it, it'll help.

If it does work, the trick to keeping it alive is avoiding thermal shock. When it's cold, best leave the laptop on. Heat alone doesn't damage it, sudden transitions from cold to hot is what cracks the solder. Alternatively, if the laptop needs to be started in a cold place, plug in the charger and charge for 10 minutes. The heat from the battery is enough to ensure there will be no problems.

My 8400GS did give some signs of failure (the infamous "screen broken in 4" issue when starting up), but i've been following what i said above, and it keeps on chugging. My board hasn't yet been in the oven.