Pavilion DV6 won't come on.

My friend's Pavilion DV6 6050se stopped working after he had struggled with a bad power outlet for a while. There was a loose connection; a lot of sparking occurred; eventually the laptop stopped working. He took it to a service center and they told him the motherboard was fried and nothing could be done.

Could someone please help out and tell me what his options are at this stage? I'll get my hands on the laptop over the weekend and will open it up to see what kind of damage it has sustained. In the meantime any advice, tips, suggestions would be most appreciated. Replacing the motherboard (or whatever part is fried) is also on the table.

At the very least, the data on the hard drive needs to be retrieved. Any suggestions regarding that would also be welcome. I'm thinking of taking out the HDD and putting it into an external USB enclosure, but I'm open to suggestions. Would it be better to put it in a desktop PC instead?

 

Product Name dv6-6050se
Product Number LE965EA
Microprocessor 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5-2410M
Microprocessor Cache 3 MB L3 cache
Memory 4 GB DDR3
Video Graphics AMD Radeon HD 6770M (1 GB DDR5)

I'm thinking this is the motherboard:
Equipped with an Intel dual core processor, the HD6770 chipset, a graphics
subsystem with 1024-MB of discrete memory, and supports bus alive/chip off (BACO)
and USB version 3.0
659151-001

 

Your best bet if warranty does fix or has run out get a replacement motherboard on eBay or the likes to replace it and also you should consider a USB adapter to plug the hard drive to working computer to get their important data off the HDD should they need access to it. Otherwise if motherboard can't be found they will have to pony up and get a new laptop and reinstall their software and migrate their data to the new system. Electrical shock if bad means no amount of fixing will fix it as components in there are all electrical and who knows was was damaged in the electrical surges..

 

Thanks, StormJumper. Would you know if the HDD can be safely put into a USB adapter? I got burned this way once - the HDD was formatted with AHCI enabled in the BIOS, and the USB adapter totally trashed the drive - only usable as a paperweight. This was some 3 years ago, so perhaps things have improved since then?

 

Just get a USB adapter but what your describing sounds extreme what happened to you HDD are you sure something else was running to cause the problem? I have a USB adapter for my laptop and desktop hard drive and never had the problem you described beyond a bad hdd or dying hdd.
Like this link:
Kingwin EZ-Connect USB to SATA/IDE Adapter USI-2535 - Micro Center

I used this to format many laptop HDD and some HDD it won't read drives above 2T desktop I found out but anything less and it will read the full drive space to format. Or to connect and transfer data from the HDD to another to prevent data deletion.

 

Could you check in your BIOS if AHCI is enabled for the HDD controller? The normal and AHCI modes don't recognise each other; if you change the mode, your laptop won't boot into Windows. You have to restart, go back into the BIOS and change the mode back to whatever it was when you installed Windows. To use the other mode, you have to format the disk and install Windows after you change the mode. I had done that on my old laptop, and then I tried to put that HDD into a USB enclosure (with the disastrous results mentioned earlier).

 

Well if you put that drive ext and it isn't the boot drive that would or should not really matter it's because the drivers no longer are booting from the ext drive but the internal drive would be the boot drive. And yes, if you tried to boot a ACHI formatted drive in IDE boot-setup it won't work it has to be in the mode it was formatted to start with cause windows will load the drivers for it in that mode setting to start. I even reformatted and set my sister DV6-6xxx like yours to ACHI and installed W7 and her software on it when I replaced the HDD and still it is working. I think there is something else wrong with your board as what your describing make is sound like a extreme problem happening of which I haven't heard of. But I read and seen where others have said if you formatted in ACHI but changed to IDE in Bios you can go back with safe-mode and make a registery change so that ACHI is set and boots back to the right settings. So what happens when you ext drive is not plugged in til after windows boots and then you plug in what does it do? Also I think there might be some problems with the enclosure as well have you tried a different enclosure to see what else happens?

 

No, no... all that happened several years ago, with my laptop. This is my friend's laptop; I don't know whether he did the AHCI stuff or not - he doesn't remember, and I don't know if HP enables it by default nowadays. However, the HDD in this one has sensitive data, so trashing the HDD is not an option.

I think what happened in the earlier fiasco was that the USB enclosure hardware/drivers did not fully support AHCI and this resulted in a trashed drive. The same enclosure worked fine with a different (new) drive. I didn't dare mess with AHCI on that one.

 

When it boots and hit the key to get into Bios you can look and see and it should tell you whether ACHI or IDE setting is used. I think mine was by default AHCI set. If they are concern about data lost they should take it to a certified shop to work on it.

 

Thanks.

They did take it to the HP service center who told them it was not repairable. Hence my involvement.

Plan of action:
1. Try to get it repaired. If not possible, then
2. Try to get the motherboard replaced. If not possible, then
3. Recover data from the HDD and transfer to his other laptop.

 

If that is the case then just get a new HDD and transfer his data to the new laptop after installing the software that reads the data back. Otherwise they will need a new laptop if that current one is giving them that much problem.

 

Update: Motherboard is toast. Apparently the power surges due to the sparking of the power plug (loose contact) killed the voltage regulator, which then passed on high voltage and fried several components downstream.

Waiting for new motherboard to arrive. The repair guy has said he will not charge for the motherboard if it doesn't work (i.e. in case the processor is also fried).

 

Make sure you have processor handy to test and or swap should the prior one be bad as well. I kinda figure all that sparking wasn't something good for a laptop with sensitive parts and components in it.

 

Final update: New motherboard installed. Everything checked out just fine. Whew!

Thanks for the support.