P28 Laptop - dead, help ....

Hi Guys,

I have a Samsung P28 I just got from a company I deal with, if I fix it its mine. When I press the on button, I hear the CD Drive and thats it. Of the set of lights up over the keyboard, the right most light [ I think its the WiFi light ] comes on. Nothing on the screen, power light on left is on. I reseated the ram last night - it booted up to the safe mode/ last best XP menu, I went in as normal, it reached windows, started the XP blue screen dump screen and then shut down. Out of 20 startups the above may happen once. Also their is no beeps from the unit in this state.

Any ideas what this could be? My thoughts are RAM issues, unfortunately I do not have any replacement RAM. Is their any undocumented boot sequences, factory resets, reset key combinations at boot etc ?

Cheers
Aidan

 

A poorly fitting heatsink can result in a computer starting and running for a short time, then crashing due to overheating. Is the CPU fan working?

John

 

Hi John,

Thanks for the reply. The heat sink is fitted fine [ I think ] - I removed it and reseated it. The CPU fan is working also.

In my case nothing appears on the screen from the get go. You turn on the power, hear the CD Drive spinning and thats it. Very occasionally it may boot to windows, but then the blue screen of death.

Any other thoughts - sounds like RAM to me. I emailed Samsung, but nothing yet. If its worth fixing I will, otherwise the skip,

Cheers
Aidan

 

try to remove the battery and start the laptop on AC power without the battery pack. I've had a situation when a defunct battery rendered the whole laptop unusable.

 

Hi notabenem

No Joy, had tried all that type of stuff, Motherboard OR Ram I would say

Keep em comin' - thanks all
Aidan

 

Hi Aidan, have you had a any luck in solving this. I've got the same problem with a P28 i own.

jk

 

Hi JK,

No Joy Im afraid JK. Still the same issue. The guys that own it are going to take a punt on buying some new ram for it to see if that will work. Its a gamble, but cheap enough to risk. Will keep you posted of results.

Meanwhile anyone else who has ideas feel free to fill us in

Cheers
Aidan

 

Hi JK and everyone,

Useless reply from Samsung Tech Support:

Dear Customer
Thank you for your mail to Samsung Electronics.

Did you try to recover the notebook using the System Recovery CD?

If it doesn't work, the Windows program may have problem.

Please reinstall the Windows XP..

We hope this has been of some assistance to you. If you do have

any further queries, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Thank you.


If they had bothered to read my email properly the above is useless. If anyone HAS a recovery disk - could they try it? Just to kill this idea off

I sent another more SIMPLE mail back, so we shall see. The above reply took 5 Days to come to me., so patience.

Aidan

 

Hi,
I have exact the same problem with a P28 from a friend.
I think also it is the mainboard or the processor. I have two RAM 256 mb installed ans i tried once a piece to boot ,the problem still the same.
I looking for a processor to test with that. I do found the Fan very dirty and a lot of dust between fan and heatsing ,i think it is related...
The fan is sucking air from the bottom of the laptop so if you put the laptop on a chair then a lot of dust will be sucked inside.
Not a very good idea i think.
Have you a ohmmeter to measure the resistance of the processor?
Ik measured 8 ohm wich is very low, I measured 0,9 Volts when system is on wich is correct.

If you found a solution let me know ,I will do the same.

Kickstarter

 

Hi there,

I have exactly the same problem. I backed up my files from the hard drive using a hard drive adaptor and my desktop could actually boot from the samsung hard drive. I disassembled the laptop and tried to fit in all the components again but the problem keeps going. I also inserted the system recovery CD to dismiss that possibility and nothing happens at all. If any of you finds the origin of the I would be thankful for a post.

Joao

 

Hi

I have yet another P28 with the same problem. Perhaps all the P28s have reached design life expectancy.

I'm sure it's an overheating problem somewhere on a circuit board. If the machine is left off for a while, I might get 90 seconds of use out of it - enough to power up and get to the windows login screen if I'm lucky. If it's an immediate reboot, I don't even get the hardware messages on-screen. If it's somewhere inbetween, I get something shown before death.

When it 'dies', it's just possible to make out images on the LCD screen, though - the backlight switches off.

Before it 'dies' everything works fine. After it 'dies' I get working power lights and fans, and not much else. No keyboard, no mouse. I can switch the wifi off (Fn/F8), but I can't switch it back on:-(

And for the "Reinstall Windows" comment, I tried booting Slackware Linux from a "Live DVD". Guess what....I got 90 seconds out of it.

Any hardware geniuses out there??

 

well I also have those problems with my P28! It's all the videochip.
And this is not first time for me.
I've bought my P28 in October of 2005. Everything was ok until August of 2006 - I experienced the same thing you all discribed (I took it with me on my trip to Hungary to store photos and it broke, can you imagine???)... graphic glitches then it stopped turning on. Service center told me that that was videochip which has burnt or something like that and they replaced me mainboard. Then it happened after 4 months on XMas eve in the end of 2006, again they replaced my mainboard. And it happened today again! I can't believe!

In service center they told me this is issue of the model...

If it was possible to return it to the shop, take money back and buy another laptop!!! and this won't be Samsung

 

hi all,
suprise, suprise im experiencing the same prob, i used my p28 24/7 for 2 yrs and then it just wouldnt boot ive spent the last 12 mnth tryin to sort the prob, ive replaced the ram, the processor put a new hdd in n still no joy, seen that it could be the video chip in a post on here does any1 know where i can get a replacement motherboard or will samsung replace it as its a common fault with this model
many thanks mark

 

I would suggest that you contact Samsung support. You could give them a link to this thread which does suggest there is an inherent problem with this particular model and see if you can persuade them to fix it. Maybe if you can get through to the right person they will be sympathetic and want to not have their reputation for quality products tainted. Repairs and parts are covered in Samsung's notebook support FAQs.

John

 

I have the exact fault first time it happend they replaced the CPU second time they replaced the mobo. Its happend a third time this time well out of warranty and they have now refused to do any thing even though the second time was out of waranty

 

I can`t add anything apart to say I have exactley the same problem.I have tried another hard drive and ram from another working laptop.Removed the heat sink and took the machine apart and checked for loose connections,all to no avail.Mine is less than 3yrs old,this does not say much for Samsung.

 

Well I've record - they have changed my motherboard 4 times, each time it left alife for 2-5 months) Finally Samsung technical center in Kyiv gave green light to return it to store and they've returned me 800$ and I have bought new Asus F3JP. Great machine, but not without problems :|

 

I gave up and brought an macbook with a 3 year warranty ill get rid of it just b4 the warranty ends.
NO way I am buying a samsung again useless

 

Wise decision (imho not about macbook, but about choosing one with long and getting rid of it later )

 

good thing about the macbook is that any probs you get with them are normaly common so apple cant deny them. My palmrest cracked so they replaced it, there was a black mark on the bottom case which looked like a crack so I told them it was and they replaced the whole bottom casing.

Samsung would have just told me it was my fault and that I dropped it lol