Is there an IT genius in the house?

Feck feck feckety feck.  One week out of warranty, and the OH's laptop has died.  It refused to boot up, but somehow we got it going yesterday.  I did a factory restore from the backup discs and it worked like a dream for 24 hours, did all its updates, restarted loads of times, seemed all sorted.

A couple of hours ago it died again, and is back to refusing to boot up.  It's totally powered off, and if we press the on button it just lights up for about 2 seconds, then goes off again, the fan doesn't even start and it doesn't attempt to boot up.  I didn't see it shut off, so I don't know if it logged itself off or just keeled over.

Obviously it's a hardware problem, but given that we're more skint than Bob Cratchet's hamster, I'm worried that we might chuck good money after bad by paying someone to try to fix something that isn't fixable.

Any thoughts from any techies would be really welcome

Comments

  • Not a dell is it?  My motherboard fried last sunday night, but despite not being warrantied there is a common fault with them so they came out and fitted a new one on Thursday free of charge.
  • No, HP.  Apparently they're prone to it as well.  Somehow that didn't make the sales blurb.....

  • Daughters' laptop died recently...also the motherboard.... 18 months old    image

    My PC is refusing to open Windows at the moment but I intend to beat it into submission this week

  • HitchHitch ✭✭✭

    wo did you but it from? some kind manufacturers give it a few weeks agfter warranty expiry date.

    otherwise try doing another factory restore. if you get it up again. otherwise it is probably the motherboard. Not sure how much you paid for it but it will probably be cheaper to buy a new one.

    sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

    my son's died recently but I manged to do a factory restore as it was a software fault.

    my daughters died the previous month and it was as dead as a dodo. No boot up etc. similar to yours. just sold it for spares in the end.

  • First thing I would try is taking the battery out, hold the power button for about 30 seconds, then plug it into the mains with the battery still out, and try and power it up again. This used to work for IBM ThinkPads.

    As GDB said, some manufacturers give you a couple of weeks grace after the warranty has officially ended.

     What's the make and model of the laptop, and where did you purchase it from?

  • Thanks everyone.  I must admit I'm assuming it's not going to be fixable, but was just hoping.....  Greg, I've tried everything physical to tempt it to fire up but it really isn't having any.

    It came from PC World.  Supposedly it's a good make - HP -  but a turkey is a turkey.....  Pass the cranberry sauce

  • What model of HP is it?

    There is an inherent fault with some of them where the motherboard does indeed fry itself. HP are aware of it and should do a free repair in or out of warranty.

  • Just had a very old woman style squint underneath trying to decipher the tiny letters -  I had to stuff it directly under a light and my arms still weren't quite long enough to read it properly!   It's an HPG6000.

  • £215+VAt  for a new motherboard if you need it, and it does sound like that could be the case, although hard to say without seeing it and having a 'play' first hand.  The recovery and then second death sounds a bit more like a software issue though, so there is a small chance that a recent update is conflicting with some hardware, so when you reinstalled windows it started off OK, but then when patched it keeled over again.  But now it's not turning on at all, that does support the dead hardware idea, and the brief recovery could be as it was burning itself out.
  • Cheers for the advice D74, what you say sounds depressingly logical and likely

    After what FR said I just googled HP laptop motherboard fault and found a wall of stuff on there, admittedly for other models, but is sounds like there's a general problem with them.  There are some really sad forums out there too, where people bang on about their IT problems in minute detail.

    Ahemimage

    Thanks for all the advice everyone, it's much appreciated.  At least we've got the running club laptop for him to play with over Chrimble, so he can still demolish unsuspecting Aussies at scrabble

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