Help - Can't turn on my Gateway Notebook (no POST)
I have a Gateway M6834 notebook, about 2 years old. It's worked like a champ, but today, I couldn't turn it on. Pressing the power button results in the green power LED and the Wi-Fi LED to flash rapidly in tandem. That's the only response. I can't get it to even start to boot up.
I've googled until my fingers bled, and followed several "no POST" support docs on Gateway.com, but no luck. I.e., taking the battery out for 24 hours, trying to turn it on with no battery in, holding down the power button for 15 seconds, ect.
I checked to make sure the RAM was seated correctly, and pulled the HDD and plugged it into an external reader and I could access all the data just fine.
Is this a motherboard problem? Is it toast?
Xbox Live: JediJurist
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I've had this with some older Dell laptops: For them it was bad RAM.
Pull the Ram chips, clean the contacts and reseat. If you have multiple chips try flipping them or running with only one.
Politely rude. Briskly vague. Firmly uninformative.
Exactly what I'd suggest. A while back I knew someone who had a Gateway laptop that just froze when he turned it on and reseating the RAM did the trick. Try pulling the battery, turning it on and then pulling the power adapter as well. Sometimes getting all the power yanked out can reset some things that are acting up.
Staats wrote:
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Does the battery seem to be getting a charge light? Is there any flakiness or weirdness when you wiggle the power adapter?
Elewis17 wrote:
The battery does get a charge light, but wiggling the power adapter does nothing.
I tried reseating the RAM, switching chips, running just one, then the other. Nothing. I've uprgraded the RAM, so I even tried the old RAM, and got nothing.
It still won't turn on.
Xbox Live: JediJurist
Wii: 0973 6525 9083 7326
PSN: JediJurist
That sounds like a blown motherboard or video card to me. If you would just replace it anyway, as a last-ditch effort, you could try disassembling it and making sure that all the cables are tight and socketed chips are tightly seated, but that's a very, very low probability of helping. And I definitely wouldn't do that before sending it in, if you plan to have it repaired.
Usually, it's not worth fixing laptops. That's not a bad unit, but it looks like you could do a pretty comparable replacement from Dell for about $750 or so.
Elewis17 wrote:
This is true and it's also one of the most frustrating things about the market.
I'm still pissed they never settled on part standards and made it so people could build their own.
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You know stuff. - MannishBoy
Why is it not "worth" fixing laptops? They are not much harder to work on than desktops and towers, only difference is things are smaller and just a bit more intricate enclosures(getting them open isn't as straight forward). They're only not worth fixing if you have the disposable income to buy another one.
@ Thin_J there are parts standards and you can build your own. The parts are just extremely expensive for DIYer's as we don't have the capital nor the need to order parts in bulk, which brings the price for individual parts down. If you really want to tackle building your own laptop you can, there are places to buy the required hardware, they just aren't as popular as regular hardware vendors. Most people are too afraid to take a laptop apart and fix it let alone build one(most don't even know it's possible). Yes it's daunting at first but it can be done.
Because they take lots of labor to take apart and reassemble ($$), and the parts are ruinously expensive.
Elewis17 wrote:
@ Malor Yes, if you are building from scratch. Most big box pre-built's you can find replacement parts for fairly cheap at ebay stores that specialize in laptop parts. If you are going to go through Gateway or dell or HP or whatever other company, then yes they will charge an exorbitant amount (i.e. $300 for a $75 LCD screen) because they'd rather you buy another laptop same with Bestbuy or any other store or company that fits that mold. The parts are cheap the labor is more because there aren't a whole lot of people that work on laptops because they're afraid of them, so the guy that does charges a premium (which is still generally cheaper than the previously mentioned). They're basically the same as a desktop or tower except smaller and more compact, so if you can repair those you can repair laptops, you just have to be patient and take your time and remember google is your friend.
Also there are places to buy DIY laptop parts, usually you buy the MoBo and the case as a package deal and you can get them with built in graphics or if you are made of money you can buy one that takes a discrete graphics card. The discrete graphics cards for laptops are about double to triple the amount of a lower midgrade desktop solution. These are hard to find resources because of the cost(for the same amount or a little less you can buy a namebrand) and is why the are not popular, not because there is no "standard".