I have a HP Laptop Pentium 4 with CDR/DVD. Actually, it's my son's. He used it about 3 semesters and suddenly heard the hard-drive making a terrible noise. At about the same time the ethernet and modem connection mal-functioned. He continued to use it with an ethernet card adapter (?). It finally crashed. I reloaded all the software and it started working again but soon crashed again. I bought another hard-drive. Same thing...it worked awhile and crashed another hard-drive. That hard drive was replaced and the computer was checked out at a local pc place. Once again.... the clunking sound and crash. A third person tried even another hard-drive .... this time nothing. If the motherboard was bad, why did it continue to work for a while. If there's a short...where do I began. Isn't there a simple test to say "yeh" or "neh" regarding the motherboard? The question is do I pay a fortune to send it back to HP or are there any true laptop repair folks around. If not, does anyone want to buy a Pentium 4 chip and cdr/dvd combo. Then I can buy my son a generic deal like mine which works fine. I paid a lot for this computer and of course it died after the warranty period. Thanks.
Mar-Mar... I believe that ddrdan (registered member here) does laptop repair. Also, since they carry HP brand, you could take it to the service desk at a Best Buy.
If you do take it to best buy to the "geek squad" make sure it works to your liking before you walk out the door. I think Best Buy is overpriced and that goes for their "squad" also. I do repairs but laptops are a little different beast. I try to avoid motherboard/chasis issues. There is a member here that I thinks specializes in laptops, it might be DDRDAN but I am not sure. What I would do since the laptop is out of warranty is compare your three options. 1.) What will it cost for HP to fix and then how long will they warranty it for. 2.) If ddrdan is the man here who fixes laptops find out his prices and warranty on the repairs. 3.) Cost of a new laptop with warranty If it is only 100 to 200 difference between fixing and buying new and the new one has a much longer warranty I would go with that option
You got that right, devilock, more or less!!! The part prices are outrageous, making a new purchase cheaper than repair. Now, some repairs are economical but any repair associated with the words "motherboard" or "screen" mean "Buy a new machine". The average motherboard costs $375 and up. With 2 to 3 hours labor and an O/S install your looking at a min. $550 repair. MAR-MAR, Give me some specifics on the model number off that unit and I can give you a better idea of what may be giving you the problem. Flip the laptop over and give me the numbers off the UPC lable also. First we need to find if it's a recall item (HP has soooooo many) or a warranty covered issue. Without any more info than you provided so far, the hard drive is not the problem!!! The hard drive is failing from some other source. Thats why the multiple failures of drives. Some guesses on the failure: Short thru the ethernet (no surge used)(common on large apartments & dorm building DSL sytems) Your power plug has been shorting CPU fan / cooling is failing. Power adapter is bad. Power inverter is bad. Someone spilled a drink on it or it was dropped. The last tech that replaced that hard drive and put another one in it without a complete power & cooling diagnostic should be shot. If I were to guess, it is not the hard drive making the "clunk", it's possibly your cooling system failing and shutting down the CPU. Thats why the abrupt stop on the hard drive, which is not good for those 2.5" drives. But I really can't tell without looking at the unit. If your looking for a short I'll give you the #1 place to look. Right where you plug the power adapter into the back of the unit. We call it the "trip" switch because more people trip over that stupid wire and break the connection on the plug at the motherboard. The second place to look is inspect under the keyboard for a drink spill or loose parts from a drop. To check for that #1 problem: Make sure the adapter is not pluged in the wall outlet. Put that mini plug in and gently wiggle it. If you feel the entire plug moving you've found the power short problem. Selling the CPU from that machine needs to be done with letting the buyer know you had a possible power problem. Hp CD/DVD's are model specific and proprietary built so it fits very few laptops. I buy broken units but you won't like the price. I have units from 2 years back that I bought for parts and still haven't used them, so I can't pay a lot for them. If you want me to look at the unit, PM me. I dont charge for diagnostics on units that will bios boot. If I have to break the case open it's an hourly rate of $45. Typical breakdown is 1 hour. Diagnostic is approx .5 to 1 hour. If you don't want it fixed, re-assembly is 1.5 hours. If the cost to repair is too high I can apply my charges towards puchasing it for parts. DDRDan
This might be to simple but I know most laptops have converters that go onto the pins of the hard drive before it is installed. Do you know if the same plastic converter was used for each new hard drive? That might be as issue, or as previously stated could be a short on the motherboard that the drive plugs into. Just adding to the possablilities!!!
