Repair News Articles from the Tech Industry
August 10, 2006
The first step in repairing any laptop or notebook is troubleshooting the problem accurately. For example, some people will run out and buy a new battery on the assumption it's failed when the problem is a frayed wire or a bad connector on the power cord, something that can be fixed with a little solder or electric tape. Likewise, a "dead" LCD screen could be a mainboard or video adapter failure, a bad inverter or a burnt out backlight. When the LCD itself needs replacing, it will probably be due to a physical crack in the glass or blocks of dead pixels. If your CD or DVD drive won't work anymore, make sure you've tried a selection of discs and try a cleaner kit before replacing the drive, and always double-check the connection before discarding the old drive. About the only problems that will identify themselves as imminent failures are increasingly loud hard drives or steadily decreasing battery life over time.
There's very little difference between troubleshooting a Dell Latitude, Toshiba Satellite, Sony Vaio, IBM Thinkpad, HP Pavilion (and Compaq) or even an Apple Powerbook or iBook. The basic designs of all of these laptops are the same, even if one model uses an Intel CPU, another an AMD,a third a PowerPC and a fourth a low power Transmeta. A technician troubleshooting Toshiba laptops may be more like to start with the battery, as they are notoriously weak, just as troubleshooting HP and Compaq notebooks often begins with the RAM. However, it's a mistake to approach any notebook problem with a preconceived notion of the outcome rather than following a logical process of elimination. Just because one model of Dell tends to blue blotches on the screen when it ages doesn't mean that Dell kept manufacturing notebooks with the same problem. IBM and Sony and Apple laptops have generally been viewed as the higher quality than the more popular brands, but they all suffer similar failures due to overheating, wear and tear, and the occasional run of bad components.
Power Failure
The troubleshooting process always starts with identifying what works. If the problem is power related (whether battery or a question of the laptop not turning on) the first step is establishing that power is getting to the laptop. This means checking that the LED on the transformer brick is lit, and if it isn't (or doesn't have an LED), that it's plugged into a good power outlet. You can check that by unplugging the transformer and simply plugging in a lamp. Some of the oldest notebook models have an internal transformer, so the line power (110 VAC in the U.S., 220 most other places) goes directly into the laptop body. The next question is whether or not any of the little LED status lights on the laptop light up with the power plugged in. Even the oldest models usually have a power good status light. If you have positive power status and the notebook simply won't turn on, the next check is the battery. Some models of notebooks will not operate without a good battery installed, but most will, so Google up your particular model with a search like "operating without battery" and find out if your laptop will operate with a dead or missing battery. If the battery isn't an issue and the laptop still won't turn on one with the power good status light lit, it could be a switch failure, but it's more likely a power regulation or mainboard failure. Troubleshooting power regulation or the motherboard requires test equipment or spare board to swap out, and is beyond the scope of these articles.
Battery life is special subset of power problems that has as much to do with poor designs as actual component failure. The older NiCd batteries were particularly susceptible to "memory" issues. If not full discharged after every charging, the battery cells begin to remember their previous charge level as a new maximum, and some individual cells may even reverse polarity while the batteries are being charged. Ni-MH (Nickel Metal Hydride Battery) which replaced NiCd (Nickel Cadmium) for standard models are somewhat better, but they can't fight poorly designed charging circuitry or bad software controls. All laptop batteries, whatever the shape, consist of a number of low voltage cells connected in series to reach the required operating voltages. You can rebuild a notebook battery (it voids the warrantee:-) but it's usually not cost effective.
more... »
