Laptop woes(my 13yr old daughters) Please help!

[Tripper11]

So my daughter does take care of her laptop. She has a 3yr old HP that has been running great in that time. We have to deal with a power cord issue, but other than that, fine.
Today she went to use it, and it would not come on.
The lights would light up, and the fan would spin, but then they would go off and it would shut down, then it would light up again, fan would come on, then off again. It does this over and over.
I tried a different battery, tried it unplugged, plugged, in a different socket, nothing.
I have a feeling it's toast, but I would like to know, before I spend hundres on a new one, or hundreds on someone telling me I need to spend hundreds, if there is anything I could possibly do to salvage it.
Thanks in advance for any help.

[hobbit709]

1. Open the memory cover

Remove and reseat the memory modules. That cures it most of the time.

[Tripper11]

2. I'll give that a try, thank you.

And for clarification are you talking the ram memory?
I did a google search and found this article, so I am a little confused.

http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-149152-help-please-laptop-wont-turn-on

And then I found this....http://www.computermemoryupgrade.net/installing-laptop-memory.html

[hobbit709]

3. Yes, the RAM.

[Tripper11]

4. Cheers Hobbit, thanks! eom

[Tripper11]

5. No dice, didn't work

I did it once, and it and the lights came on the laptop stayed on, the fan hummed away for a bit, then nothing. No screen, no boot.
Ugh.

[DaveJ]

6. I did a google search

Just guessing that the video driver chip is fried, caused by a ventilation design flaw, and there's nothing that can be done. There are hundreds of posts complaining about it here: http://forums13.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?admit=109447627+1289415482015+28353475&threadId=1147659

You should get a USB hard drive adapter to recover the data, like this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Serial-ATA-Adapter-Converter-Backup/dp/B001Q4Z5KY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1289416296&sr=8-1

[Tripper11]

8. Dave thanks for the tip on the USB drive adapter

If all else fails, I will certainly grab one.

[canetoad]

7. Tripper, does it make any sounds

when attempting to boot up ie little beeps?If it does, can you listen and let us know what they are, for example two short or one long three short.

When a computer boots up it performs Power On Self Test (POST) to make sure all its bits are functioning correctly. There is a code of system beeps to help identify problems.

[Tripper11]

9. No sounds...

A quick whirr of the fan/or drive a very faint tick/click sound, then off. I do know what beeps you are ferring to, and there are none.

[canetoad]

10. Mate, not a lot to offer

besides taking the battery out and trying to power it up from mains power sans battery. (thinking aloud: something is stopping machine completing POST, thus reboots)

It's premature to call a fried video chip without supporting evidence in the form of POST failure beeps. I think your main decision ATM is how much you wish to spend on repairs knowing the machine is out of warranty.

[Tripper11]

11. That's kind of what I'm thinking at this point canetoad

$$$ for repairs vs $$$ for a new machine, there is probably not a lot of difference at this point I would imagine.
As I mentioned to my wife, if we wait until after Thanksgiving(we won't partake in any "Black Friday" events) and before Christmas, I'm sure we could get her a pretty good mid-range laptop, for her needs in the $400 range.

[Tripper11]

12. It's....ALIVE!!!!!

I have NO idea what the hell happened. My daughter's frined came over to spend the night. She heard the somw whirring, told me she hit the power button, and the damned thing fired up!!
Seems to be working fine. I did a big clean up, ran Advanced System Care, did a Windows update, tons of stuff...defragged....seems to be running fine.
:shrug:

[Tripper11]

13. And I am backing it all up now!

I had backed it up a while ago, but she does take a lot of pictures and makes these little movies and stuff, so I am making damn sure I have everything on a disc for when it dies again.

[canetoad]

14. That's great news Tripper

I wonder if something has come loose - a component or a wire....that would account for it sort of fixing itself.

Maybe if it stops again, you can get her to drop it. :rofl:

[Stinky The Clown]

15. I see it is now working, but you don't know why.

This is a pure guess on my part, but based on our own experience with kids and laptops.

Dust on the processor fan. The fan runs but is pretty dust clogged and can't breathe properly. All your fiddling dislodged it enough to allow a minimal amount of heat dissipation. The processor will shut down if it overheats and dust is the cause.

[Tripper11]

16. Thanks Stinky...seems as logical as anything

And of course when I was fiddling with it, I did use some compressed air to blow out dust etc.

[qanda]

17. Can you give me the model number of this laptop?

The exact same thing happened to both of my children's laptops. They had HPs and it was an issue that caused HP to extend the warranty on their laptops. We sent them both in, at various times, to have whatever part replaced and they did work again for a while but eventually they both became unusable and HP said they were no longer responsible to fix them. Needless to say that I no longer buy HP laptops (but that's just my experience).