Problem with dv6000z display (but may apply to other HP notebooks

Every now and then I will press the power button to boot up my notebook the notebook will start to boot but the display will not work. After maybe 10 seconds it'll restart and keep restarting but each interval the notebook is on gets shorter so that I may press the button to power it on but it won't stay on more than a second (the notebook is already plugged into an outlet).

Of course, this happens occasionally and so far I haven't dug up anything that could explain the reason why it does this. I do have an nVidia graphics card in there but I don't know whether that would truly be the cause of it.

Any suggestions?

 

Odds are it's the usual fried NVIDIA chipset.

 

Shoot, from google, I was able to find similar threads relating to a burned out chipset from HP and it does seem like my problem.

Since the notebook is already outta warranty, should I still try to see if HP will repair it? Because money's been really kinda tight for me and I don't want HP to give me a round about that ends up just wastes time, money, and energy.

What are my possible options? I have since passed the notebook on to my brother recently and he's in high school so often needs a computer to work from and I want to try and resolve this problem soon.

 

You can try HP, but their Limited Warranty Service Enhancement to cover this fiasco has probably expired:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&docname=c01087277

The other option is to reflow the chip, as LordWalrus instructs here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4792475&postcount=15
And replace the thermal pad with a copper shim. Read the rest of that thread. I've repaired a few notebooks with varying success. I'd consider a copper shim critical to keeping these NVIDIA chips from failing again.

 

Wow, this is funny. This is the exact issue on friend's dv6700 laptop. Sometimes it did POST and tried to boot but after 5-30 secs or so it would shut down completely and get stuck in a loop trying to boot. I thought it was faulty RAM/HDD/DVD/whatever, but after stripping down laptop to bare motherboard + known working RAM it would still misbehave....

I did get it fixed. Here's how:
1. Take laptop apart, clean heatsink and replace thermal paste on CPU with AS5. Replace thermal pad between GPU and heatsink with a copper penny (Canadian ones made after 1976 are not 100% copper), sandwich with thermal paste and attach heatsink back. Assemble laptop.

2. Remove battery and connect AC adapter. When you start the machine, hold down the Delete key as you press the power button on the machine. Keep holding the delete key until you see the initial HP Logo on the screen or until the boot fails and it shuts down. If it fails, then you need to shut it down and start over. To shut it down, hold the power button down until it shuts down and doesn't try to restart. Then start the procedure over again. In my experience, it will probably start within 5 tries but it might take more.
Once it boots up immediately go to the bios, set correct Date/time, boot options (if needed), etc, and save the changes. It will probably hang with blank screen, so you should manually shut down and power on. After this your laptop should always boot perfectly fine! And if it starts acting up again, repeat the Delete key procedure. (I got this method from here)

I don't know how permanent this solution is, but so far it worked for me!

UPDATE 23-Jul-2010. Another computer I'm fixing... HP dv9804ca (dv97xx series) (AMD + nVidia)
Symptoms: after pressing power on button, it would restart every 2 sec in an endless loop. Holding DELETE key does not help. Stripping to bare motherboard and good RAM made no difference. If BIOS battery is removed, after 10mins it would POST and stay on for 30-2min (wouldn't boot though) before getting back to the endless reboot cycle.

After doing 1st BGA rework with a heatgun I was able to make it POST and boot into Ubuntu 10.04, but it wouldn't boot into Windows Vista (black screen with cursor, very jittery).
Did 2nd BGA rework. Both Ubuntu and Windows work great! Booting off HDD works fine, but USB-key or CD makes it restart exactly 4 times before it starts to boot.

Here is the guide I followed (edited for grammar and readability). Taken from here.

 

I heard this is more applicable with AMD mobo? Is this true? Or does it equally affect the Intel mobo? Thanks.

 

It effects Intel motherboards with dedicated NVIDIA GPUs too. All AMD notebooks of this vintage have NVIDIA chipsets but only a minority of Intel notebooks have NVIDIA GPUs, so HP sort of had to extend the warranty for their AMD notebooks but they abandoned Intel users.

Reflowing and the penny trick work on both. You can buy proper copper shims advertised especially for these notebooks on eBay if you'd prefer.

 

Thanks. My friend got an HP 6 months ago. Hopefully it's not the same one but it's good to know.