Laptop Help Needed

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 11:15 pm

A couple weeks ago I scored a Sony Vaio z505hs laptop at a thrift store for $5. It has a 500MHz P3, 256MB of RAM, 12GB hard drive with XP Pro on it, and a 12" screen. As soon as I hacked up a way to power it and replaced the munched USB port (I don't know how people can kill USB ports), it worked perfect, even ran XP pretty fast. Then a few days later, I was using it on my floor with it on a roll of tape (so it wouldn't suffocate on cat hair). I then accidentally tipped it back off the tape, and it instantly powered off. Now only the power light will come on, the hard drive and screen don't do anything, but the USB port still provides power and the CPU heats up, with the fan eventually turning on. I don't know if it did anything, but the keyboard fell out when it fell (it didn't come with most of the screws in the bottom half, none of the ones for the keyboard).

Does anyone have any ideas on what the problem could be? Could it be that a capacitor in the power regulation got knocked loose or something, since it pretty much half works? I'll post pics if anyone thinks it'll help.

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 5:50 pm

Bump, anyone have any ideas at all?

thehackerinside · Post by **thehackerinside** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 2:08 pm

Is the heatsink screwed down properly as I know of A few laptops that I had repaired with this problem and not even switching on, If it is screwed down properly I would try removing the battery (depends how you manged to power it), hard drive and ram and switch it on via mains.

If not I don't know, Have you maybe put too much power in and killed it?

Joe

nitro2k01 · Post by **nitro2k01** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 11:26 am

Also try connecting an external screen. I don't know if it will help, but it's worth trying.

DukeNukenFourEver · Post by **DukeNukenFourEver** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 2:06 pm

Hm... Maybe find out the company and demand they fix it? I know that sounds like a scam but it's worked for me before. At customer service, you hear so many baboons and crap you don't even want receipts, you just want them to shut up and get the next call going. Who knows. Good luck.

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 7:11 pm

Even if your HDD was dead, the screen would still display something if it worked. Your screen or screen driver may be dead. First, you need to get something to show up. Try hooking up an external screen. If you get an image, see if it gives you an error message or something about the HDD. If the HDD's dead, you can replace it, but if something on the mobo is fried that handles the interfacing with the HDD, then all you can do is run something off of a flash drive, a CD (look into Knoppix), or an external USB HDD.