Hi,

Having a problem with a friends laptop and I wondered if you guys could help.

The laptop originally had a fault where the screen would have a blue hue. I took it apart and diagnosed the screen cable as being faulty (reseat the cable and hold it at the right angle and it goes away). I put the laptop to one side and ordered a new cable.

The cable arrived last week, turned on the machine and now it doesn't boot. No display (either on the screen, or when connected to an external monitor), not even the POST stuff. Fan comes on at full speed, then slows down. Caps lock key illuminates as normal but does not flash or anything. After maybe 10 mins it just shuts off.

The laptop is currently largely disasambled on my desk.

I've tried a CMOS reset, and removing the memory (which gave me a flashing Caps Lock light but nothing else). Any ideas?

I suspect the laptop has been dropped at some point as the casing is showing cracks. I've also noticed when connected to the mains a faint "clicking" can be heard coming from the motherboard. Sometimes.


Laptop is an HP G62-a28SA (specs here - http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfr ... lc=en&product=4226614 )

"ordered a new cable" - Was it a cable built for that specific model or not? Check I/O if not.
If both ends of the cable are same, you can even try turning it around. I know the possibility for this is like 0,000001%, but I've seen a few of these cases.
So what I'm trying to say is that the laptop probably doesn't recognise the screen, so it won't do anything. If none of these work, my guess would be a faulty MB.

Quote from matijapkc :

"ordered a new cable" - Was it a cable built for that specific model or not? Check I/O if not.
If both ends of the cable are same, you can even try turning it around. I know the possibility for this is like 0,000001%, but I've seen a few of these cases.
So what I'm trying to say is that the laptop probably doesn't recognise the screen, so it won't do anything. If none of these work, my guess would be a faulty MB.

It's the right cable, it's got different ends at each end (i.e. you couldn't plug it in the wrong way if you tried). Dug it out of the cupboard, put the new cable in, wouldn't turn on, put the old cable back in, same problem

I'm leaning towards motherboard failure but I really hope not!

My brother had one of these. I might actually still have it buried deep in one of my boxes with random junk.

I remember it died in a somewhat similar fashion. There were no display issues, but it would switch itself off after a few minutes for no apparent reason. I managed to temporarily fix it by reflowing but it lasted for just about a week.
If you decide to go through with the reflowing, there is at least one suggestion I can share. The G62 I dealt with was a bit of a bitch to put back together because the heatsink just wouldn't fit tightly on the CPU and GPU. The chipset heatsink was even worse because there was like 1 mm wide gap between the chip and the piece of metal that was supposed to spread the heat. I ended up using an unusually generous amount of thermal grease to fill the gaps. I had to take it apart three times before I got it right...