Long shot but i could use some help troublshooting a d900c for a friend

Friend of mine gave me their notebook to try to fix and ive hit a wall.

First the hardware
intel X6800 core 2 extreme
4GB DDR2
2x Nvidia 7950GTX 512MB
100GB 7200rpm + 160GB 5400rpm

With both video cards in it powers but no display. You can see the display power as it gets a little brighter, as if the backlight comes on, but nothing comes on. No Post.

Trying the video cards 1 by 1. 1 of them it powers on you can see the backlight come on but then it just beeps twice and sits there, nothing on the screen. putting the other in it powers on, no beeps but the caps, num and scroll lock just start flashing.

Tried different sicks of memory and that didnt change anything.

i was thinking of trying a different cpu? since its a desktop socket 775 i should be able to just grab some crappy dual core and use it for testing.

i belive this was one of killernotebooks Odachi models but my friend isnt sure.

any ideas?

 

did you try an external display?

 

yeah and nothing there either. Tried a different cpu and i got 3 beeps instead of 2. Allthough the cpu i had may have been too new for it.

 

To state the obvious, if you can't even get into BIOS then something is seriously afoot.

Has your friend recently tried to flash the laptop with new BIOS, or changed something in BIOS recently? Any symptoms on the laptop before the problem occurred would also be helpful.

The only time I never got to the BIOS screen is when I changed the hard drive to IDE removable in the BIOS menu. It didn't like this at all. The only way I got BIOS back was constantly doing a hard shut down and then randomly pressing "F" buttons at start up. Got tired of this and left the screen on and the BIOS load screen literally just flickered back to life. Changed setting back and all was fine afterwards.

I think a dead CPU would not light up the display, maybe a few LED power lights.

 

Sounds to me like the master 7950GTX died and the other won't boot since it's not flashed to master. If you could blind flash the slave card to master it could work again. The probability that a CPU fails is relatively low nowadays (unless you seriously overvolt it), most likely some other component (the GPU) will fail way before the CPU does.

 

Didnt realize with the cards one was defined as master and the other slave. If the computer isnt posting though im probably not going to be able to flash the other card to master?

 

True, in that case it would be difficult. Of course it would be best if you could test the cards in another chassis. Also, if you have nothing to lose just try the baking method on both cards and it might work again (if the cards are the problem that is). Master/Slave issue might not be the problem after all, since I just remembered that this was introduced to improve performance with newer cards in SLI, I'm not sure if this was necessary with the GeForce Go 7950 GTX...

 

Do you know any place where i can get parts for this? like motherboard or video cards?

Also honestly im thinking i might tell them not to bother, correct me if im wrong but the 7950's arent that fast these days right?

 

GeForce Go 7950 GTX SLI is about as fast as a single Mobility Radeon HD 4650, so it's not really worth it. The CPU however should still be able to shine in every game, so upgrading the GPU might seem as a feasible option, but the GeForce Go 7950 GTX should be MXM v2.1 IV so although newer cards will fit they might not run at full speed due to the missing HE connector. Not to speak of lacking bios support and insane high prices for such old components. Same goes for the motherboard. I think it might be time to upgrade to another Laptop... but then you might as well just give the baking method a shot, you have nothing to lose anyway.

 

I have a professional (Quadro FX) video card which can fit in your laptop if you want :

http://forum.notebookreview.com/com...0m-compatible-mxm-2-0-2-1-type-iii-he-iv.html

 

Yeah i have a 5650 in my new laptop and i was thinking they were on par. The x6800 is only a dual core though.

I might just tell them to forget it and try to part it out

 

Try the oven method and you can probally save the laptop.
Oven method Short Version:
Take your Graphic card out of the mobo, you must be takeout any thermal paste, cooler, heat sink... anything that doesn’t make part of the Graphic card. Pre-heat the oven to 180-200ºC, put the GC inside, don't let it touch the oven (you can make 4 foots with aluminum paper). Keep ‘it there for 8-10 minutes. After that turn the oven off and let the door open for 30 minutes. Take the card out connect to the mobo and "voilá" is working again (I can't guarantee that, but already tried several times and it always worked.

 

ive heard of this method before but im curious what exactly is this doing to the card to sometimes fix it?

 

Well it basically fixes the microscopic soldering cracks by melting them again. Try searching through the forum and you will get several threads about it.