Laptop Repair---need a geek with parts.

Im one of those geeks you seek, ive been working on pc's and laptops for going on 4 years now. Ill give it you straight up, if your laptop isnt a high end laptop like a XPS, or an Asus Gaming laptop, or a Lenovo, Macbook, or one of those, your laptop is junk and it was destined for the trash bin the day you paid for it. Most laptops are not designed for upgrades, or fixes. If it gets sent in to be fixed, its usually not fixed, they just replace everything inside because its cheaper for them to do so. As I said, if its not one of the others above, or another high end laptop, I am sorry you wasted your money.

 

I had a dv9000 from HP as well. Alot of people on line talking about needing to "reflow" the board to make it work again.

Simple thing, dont get a HP laptop.

Walmart.com has alot of refurbed machines. We bought the wife another desktop for less than 2 bills to replace the laptop she fried.

 

Unless you are buying one of the higher end Dell Xps, Alienware, Asus ROG, IMac, or Mac Books, laptops are designed to be thrown away and repurchased every couple of years. Same with home PC's that you buy at the big box stores, they arent designed to last more than a couple of years. They do this to keep you buying their ####. Thats why gamers usually spend so much more for their gear because gamer pc's and gamer laptops above are designed to take the abuse, but with that comes a huge price tag. So you see that huge price tag and think screw that noise, and you get the cheaper one that has mediocre stats and will do what you need it to. Well in a couple of years, youll be trying to get it fixed and you find out that the video card is soldered to the motherboard, the cpu and heatsink are encased in a place that they are impossible to get to without voiding the warranty. So what do you do? You say screw it and go buy the next model that is priced around the same point.


Did you know most laptops all have a major design flaw? The intake fan is either under it where it sits next to your leg, table, or blanket, and cant get air, this causes airflow to move slow, so dust and dirt end up settling onto the heatsink. This causes your laptop to go into thermal shutdown, youll end up taking it to ToolSquad at Bestbuy, and they will just blow it out and charge you $65-100.

The number 1 source for laptops suffering from slowness and lock ups? Thermal lock up. caused by the same issues above. Thats why I will never spend 300-400-or even 600 on a cheap laptop from one of these box stores. I would order straight from Asus ROG. Their laptops have a side air vent that exhausts air out the back behind the monitor, not taking air in the bottom and through the side. Lots better quality, and a lot better performance

 

DO NOT just go buy a used laptop for $150 and swap out the hard drives, thats the most asinine thing ever. To do that, you will have to make sure the cpu, motherboard, memory, video card, internals are all the same as the previous. The drivers on one laptop may not be compatible with the other laptop. If you have a Dell, and buy an older Compaq, it wont work the components arent compatible and the hard drive wont even boot up, then your out $150.

 

I suggest you google your laptop model # and blue screen of death. That way you will know what is likely why it died. If it is a HP may as well pull the drives and toss it, everything else inside is proprietary and will only work with the manufacturer that made that machine. Mine was a thousand dollar laptop and was very painful to toss. Yet I learned my lesson about HP laptops the hard way. For what it is worth? My HP also had side venting, drew air in from the front and blew it past the battery in the rear. It wasnt dusty inside when I tore it apart. I am geekey enough to be able to have replaced the board, yet from what I am gathering the HP just plain stinks! So I hope yours is not a HP.

Mind you putting your C drive into another machine would have to be used as a D or what ever drive. Because when windows turns on it will see alot of changes and then crash the machine. It would require the original install disc (presuming it isnt a proprietary disc ie gateway, dell or whom ever). Then you could tell the new machine to search the old drive for your files.
Granted on my laptop or any computer I have always had my files saved to a different drive other than the C:. The fun part is my tower now has two more 160 gig drives from the laptop.

 

I just wanted to mention why it is a computer will lock up with the old drive in a different machine with a windows platform. Windows has logged on to the internet with the old machine and created a "foot print". That foot print says what the old machine had for cpu, memory, and the specific board id #'s. These things cant be duplicated. So when you fire up the drive in a different machine it sees the difference and shuts down as a copy write protection. Unless you have a generic install disc from Microsoft that the machine can boot from, the software will make it shut down as soon as it comes up with the desktop. The only other way to circumvent this is to contact Microsoft and buy a new license for the machine you are operating.

As to if you are an XP user. XP licenses could be faked by entering the last sequence of the cd key with 00000 (5 zero's). So microsoft is killing the xp platform so that you must buy a license.

 

Its not a copy write protection, the original install is installed with a set of drivers that will only work for that particular type of machine, in order for it to change, everything must match up perfectly. There is no copywrite protection, its a protection against the wrong drivers not being there and corrupting the data on the disk. You can switch hard drives from laptop to laptop, but the components inside, motherboard, video card, LCD screen, mouse pad, everything must be compatible with the software from the previous laptop, if its not, you will not be able to start that disk, youll get a BSOD, or a Blue Screen of Death.

 

I just want to highlight one thing here, that would be your comment I bolded. Microsoft is not killing the XP Platform to force you to buy a license. XP is over 10 years old 14-15 to be exact, its the longest running version of any windows operating system, its old and its incredibly expensive for MS to write the code for the newer hardware for PC's when the coding required needs a specialized code. Thats why they are killing it. Windows 7 is the best OS for PC's and laptops out there, Windows 8 and 8.1 is getting the Ax at the end of this year as well because its horrible. Windows 9 is getting released this fall, and it will be a very close look of Windows 7, but with more flare and the coding from windows 8.