How to repair a laptop computer
If your laptop appears to be dead here’s some steps to troubleshoot the problem…
First Method: If your laptop shows no signs of life…
When you press the power button nothing happens, the laptop doesn’t respond with the usual fan spin, lights, and screen flicker.
Here’s what you should try:
1. The usual culprit is your DC Adapter or laptop charger. Check the lead point on the charger to ensure it isn’t damaged in anyway. If you have a voltmeter test the voltage while it’s plugged in to make sure it is sending an electric current.
2. Try another wall outlet. Though not often, wall outlets may go bad and simply plugging into another one can do the trick.
3. If you managed to test the voltage and it checked fine and switching to another wall outlet did not solve your problem try doing the above after removing the laptop battery and keeping the DC adapter plugged in.
If none of the above corrected the issue then you may have bad hardware internally. Things that could “fry” are the power supply unit inside the laptop (which includes the charge port that may go bad from wear and tear), the motherboard, or the processor.
The power supply is the most common failure of hardware for any manufacturer but sometimes the motherboard can short out too. The motherboard has many chips on its silicon board that can go bad from a voltage spike so this is a common culprit as well. The processor hardly ever goes bad so in most cases this piece can be forgiven as the cause.
Second Method: If your laptop turns on when you press the power button and seems to go through the usual boot routine but no picture is displayed on screen.
There are many causes of this so let us start with the most common. Your LCD display could have failed somehow and short of you dropping and/or accidentally cracking the screen consider the following:
If you look at the screen closely it will be either black with no visible display of anything or it might have a faint display of your operating system. If you can see a faint picture your backlight for the LCD is probably dead but the LCD screen itself is fine. The backlight provides all the lighting effect that the crystal on your screen need to display picture.
Most laptops will have a VGA port or monitor port on the side that you can connect an external monitor to. Most laptop keyboards feature a key usually found on the Function keys of F keys that can enable VGA output. Try to locate the key by looking for a monitor or something that looks like a display symbol (This will not damage your laptop)
If you manage to get a picture on the external screen this is good and bad… it is good because it means you only need to replace the screen but it is bad because LCD screens can get very pricey.
If you still don’t get a picture through the external monitor then you might start considering more serious issues.
The memory is one of the most common laptop issues so it is a good idea to try this troubleshooting routine. You can begin by simply reseating memory and leaving only one module in the board (if you have two) to check whether one or both the memory DIMMs are bad.
The other option is trying a new memory DIMM that will work on your system. Many of us don’t have memory DIMMs lying around so it might be worth researching online on websites like www.crucial.com what kind of memory you have and see if you can locate that type somewhere to try out.
Once you have a memory DIMM handy open the memory compartment on the back of the laptop and remove the memory DIMMs in there and replace with the new one and see if your laptop will turn on normally and go through a boot cycle.
If the memory method doesn’t solve the issue then we can conclude that the most likely cause of your issue is some kind of motherboard problem. Unfortunately motherboards are also very pricey.
Third Method: Call CinchIT and one of our experts will diagnose the problem for you and present you with a professional solution. Contact: 1-508-425-4714