How to fix video problem on HP laptops

How to fix video problem on HP laptops:
In this post I explain how you can fix a known video problem on some HP laptops without actually taking it apart. Most likely the fix is not permanent but this will buy you some time, enough to backup personal files or even use the laptop until you get a new one. There is no guaranty this fix work 100%.
Here are some HP models affected by this known video failure problem: HP Pavilion dv2000, dv6000, dv9000, tx1000 tablet PC, Compaq 700, v3000, v6000 and probably some others.
If you know more models, please mention them in comments after this post.

CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM:

As I know, the video problem somehow related to NVIDIA chip located on the motherboard. Overtime the NVIDIA chip separates from the motherboard and the laptop video fails.

SYMPTOMS OF THE PROBLEM:

When you turn on the laptop, all LEDs light up but there is no video on the laptop screen or external monitor. The laptop screen remains completely black and blank. The cooling fan spins as normal, on some models it stars spinning right away on other models after some time.
I found this trick mentioned by Walliot (comment 85) in this post. This trick called “towel fix” and used to fix “no video” issue in xbox360.

HOW TO FIX:

1. Remove laptop battery and hard drive.

2. Plug the AC adapter and turn on the laptop. Make sure the laptop is actually on, all LEDs should work.

3. Wrap the laptop with towels so all air intakes are closed.

4. Keeps the laptop wrapped in the towel for about one hours.

5. Unplug the AC adapter from the wall the let the laptop cool down (do not touch it for a while).

6. Unwrap the laptop and try tuning it on.
I didn’t really believe that this trick might work and tried it just because of curiosity but… IT WORKED!!!!
LAPTOP #1. HP tx1000 Tablet PC.

First, I tried this fix on a failed HP tx1000 Tablet PC.

I didn’t have paper towels at work but I had plenty of bubble wrap.

I closed the laptop in a tablet mode (with hard drive and battery removed), plugged the AC adapter and wrapped the laptop properly in bubble wrap.

After that I just waited for about two hours and unplugged AC adapter from the wall.

Waited for about 30 minutes and tried turning it on.

Success!!! The laptop started with video.

I just couldn’t stop and tried the fix on another failed laptop.
LAPTOP #2. HP Pavilion dv6000.

This is a different model with very similar failure symptoms. It turns on, all LED lights work but there is no video.
This time I didn’t something extra. To make sure there is no cool air coming into the laptop though bubble wrap, I closed all air vents with sticky tape.

After that I turned on the laptop from AC adapter (again with hard drive and battery removed) and wrapped the laptop base with bubble wrap.

The laptop was running like that for about 60-70 minutes but then I noticed that all LED lights went off. Not sure what happened, maybe the laptop overheated too much and shut down on its own. Anyway, I didn’t touch it for about 30 minutes and let it cool down.
My fix was successful again! The laptop turned on with video and booted to the desktop.

HOW THIS FIX WORKS:

Here’s my understanding of how this fix works.

When you run a laptop wrapped in towels (bubble wrap in my case), it gets very hot because there is no air circulation inside the heatsink. The heatsink and GPU (NVIDIA chip) run so hot that it melt solder between the chip and motherboard and the video chip gets resoldered to the motherboard.
Now I have to test for how long this fix last.

RELATED POSTS:

In one of the previous posts I explained how I fixed failed video chip by backing the motherboard in an oven.

In one of the following posts I explain how to reflow failed NVIDIA graphics chip with a heat gun.

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Laptop is dead How to troubleshoot the problem

Laptop is dead. How to troubleshoot the problem.:
In this post I’ll explain how to troubleshoot a dead laptop and find the problem. The following troubleshooting tips are not model and brand specific, they should work for most laptops.
Let’s take a look at two different scenarios.
Example 1. The laptop is absolutely dead.

When you plug in the power adapter and press on the power button, there is no signs of life at all. The laptop will not make usual noises, LEDs will not light up, the fan will not spin, the screen is blank and black, etc… In short, the laptop is dead.
What you can do in this case?

1. Make sure the wall outlet is working and the laptop DC adapter is getting power from the outlet. Try another wall outlet.

2. Test the laptop DC power adapter, make sure the voltage output is correct. You can test the DC power adapter with a voltmeter.

3. Let’s say the DC adapter is fine and the adapter outputs correct voltage. In this case unplug the power adapter from the laptop, remove the battery, wait for 1-2 minutes, plug in the adapter and try turning on the laptop again.
OK, you tested the adapter and it’s bad. If you decide to replace the original DC adapter with a generic one, you’ll have to follow this rule:

The voltage output on your new adapter has to be exactly the same as on the original adapter. The amperage on the new adapter could be the same or higher.
If nothing helps and the laptop is still dead, apparently the motherboard is fried or there is a problem with the DC power jack. It’s possible the DC power jack is broken and the motherboard is not getting any power from the adapter. In this case you’ll have to disassemble the laptop and replace the power jack. Check out this guide for fixing laptop power jack.
Example 2. When you plug the DC power adapter and press on the power button, the laptop starts making normal noises, the LEDs work properly but noting appears on the screen. The laptop will not start.





First of all, take a closer look at the LCD screen. Look at the screen under bright light. It’s possible that the image is still on the screen but it’s very faint. If that’s the case, check out these tips for troubleshooting laptop with backlight failure.

If there is no image on the laptop LCD screen, test the laptop with an external monitor. Connect an external monitor to the VGA port on your laptop and turn the laptop on. You can toggle video output between the internal LCD screen and external monitor by pressing Fn and F4 keys simultaneously on HP laptops, Fn and F5 keys on Toshiba laptops, Fn and F7 keys on IBM laptops. Other laptops may use different key combinations.
Let’s say the external monitor works fine but the internal LCD screen has no image at all. If that’s the case, your problem could be related to the LCD screen or the video cable. Also, make sure the video cable makes good connection with the motherboard and the LCD screen. Try reconnecting, reseating the cable.

In my case, both internal and external monitors were absolutely dead. Neither of them had image. That means the problem is not related to the LCD screen or the video cable. From my experience I know that this problem could be related to the laptop memory.

Try reseating the memory module, maybe it’s not making good connection with the memory slot. Try cleaning contacts on the memory module with pen eraser. Try moving the memory module into another slot. Try replacing the memory module with another known good module, it’s possible that your original module is dead.

If you have two memory modules installed you can try removing them one by one, it’s possible that one of the modules is bad. Try installing different memory modules into different memory slots.
In my case reseating, swapping the memory module didn’t help. I was pretty confident that my problem is not memory related and I moved on.

Try removing battery, hard drive and DVD drive and turning on the laptop without these components.

Also, try turning on the laptop with an external monitor when the video cable is unplugged from the motherboard. If the laptop start with video on the external monitor, apparently there is something wrong with the laptop display panel.

In my case removing the hard drive and DVD drive didn’t help. Unplugging the video cable didn’t help either.

I continued taking my laptop apart piece by piece and tested it after each step.

I removed wireless card, modem, disconnected the keyboard but it didn’t help.

I still wasn’t able to boot the laptop with video on the external monitor.

Finally, I disassembled the laptop and removed the motherboard.

On this picture you see my final test. The motherboard has been removed from the base and I assembled basic barebone system on my bench.

1. Motherboard. Like on most laptops, in my case the video card is integrated into the motherboard

2. CPU with heatsink and cooling fan.

3. Known good memory module.

4. The power button board witch I need to turn on the system.

5. Working DC power adapter.
Still cannot get any video on the external monitor. The system turns on, the cooling fan starts spinning but there is no video.
At this point I’m 95% sure that the motherboard is dead. CPU failures are not very common, so it must be bad motherboard.

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The new iPad runs the iPhone OS and thats the problem

By Jay Garmon

No matter how excited you are about the 9.7-inch HD display, capacitive multitouch interface, or staggeringly cheap 3G data plans promised by Apples iPad, theres one feature thats billed as a benefit but may prove to be more of a bug: The iPad runs the iPhone OS. On the surface this seems like shrewd platform cross-compatibility, but do you really want to pay between $499 and $829 (plus data plan) for a device that actually does less -- as in no built-in camera, no phone -- than your iPhone?

While you may be smiling inwardly at the notion of getting all your existing iPhone apps ported to your iPad for free (youve already paid for them), theres a question of whether anyone really wants to run apps designed for a phone-sized screen on a tablet-sized display. During Steve Jobss demo today, we saw this phenomenon in action. Either the iPhone app ran at native resolution as a floating block inside a lot of blank screen real estate, or the iPad upscaled the app to its full screen resolution, presenting you with ridiculously oversized icons and buttons. Wef one could run multiple iPhone apps side by side on the iPad, that would be worth talking about, but that brings me to the second problem with building an iPhone OS-based tablet: No multithreading.

The iPhone OS cant run background processes. Wet cant have two apps open at the same time. You cant chat while watching a video. You cant read the New York Times while listening to Pandora. You cant toggle between a word processor and a spreadsheet, or a Web browser and a presentation. Thus, while you can get an iPad version of iWork for $30 ($9.99 each for Pages, Numbers and Keynote), you wont be using any of those apps simultaneously -- which is how many of us work best. Heres betting that most iPad adopters will want to rebuy most of their apps in iPad versions, which makes me wonder why the iPad couldnt get its own multithreaded OS to begin with.

The other major drawback to the iPads iPhone OS-basis is a lack of support for Adobe Flash. Well accept not being able to render highly interactive Flash Web sites on my phone, but on a high-end media consumption device like the iPad We should be able to open every Web site on the planet. This Flash incompatibility also bans any Web video player that isnt Quicktime or Youtube. Sorry budding filmmakers, but there will be no Vimeo or Hulu or Yahoo Video for you on the iPad. Jobs himself showed a failed Flashplayer icon during his Web surfing demo today, so clearly Steve isnt perturbed by this feature limitation, which wont be solved until HTML5 reaches full adoption -- months or years from now.

On the bright side, the iPad running the iPhone OS does mean that the new iBook store will be cross-compatible with the iPhone, which is great news for iPhone owners. The iBook store will sell ePub versions of books from major publishers, which means digital reading just got a boost, if only because iBooks will appear on the worlds most popular mobile phone. That said, We dont expect the iBookstore to truly revolutionize publishing, both because the $14.99 price point suggested for iBook titles is still too high, and because We cant rip my existing dead-tree books to the platform. While almost anyone can copy a CD into iTunes easily, almost no one can scan in paperbacks to iBooks with any speed or grace. At $14.99 each Wem not going to rebuy all my favorite books for the iPad.

Now that the iPad SDK is in the wild, We expect developers to create new and innovative applications and content that truly take advantage of the iPad form factor, display, and interface. Until those iPad-native apps show up, however, Well reserve judgment as to whether the iPad is the successor to the glorious iPhone, or the ignominious Newton.

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