Success story!

[artois7]

Don't often get many success posts here so I'll share a little story.

I purchased an Advent Roma 2001 last night for £30. It had fallen down the stairs and, according to the owner, "shows no power at all, dead". They removed the harddrive to keep their data.

I get it home and the screen is filthy and appears cracked. Thoroughly washed and scrubbed the screen, and under all the dirt/grime is a very nice condition 15.6" panel with no scratches or anything. Already a result for £30!

I then press the power button. It turns on for 3 seconds then cuts out. Odd. I removed all the peripherals (ram, wifi, dvd, etc) and no change. Just as I was putting it back together to leave it for the night, I decided to unscrew the fan and heatsink. Upon lifting the heatsink, the CPU came straight out with it.

Put the CPU back in place and turned the screw to lock her in place, hey presto, it posts first time!

Somehow the screw had managed to unlock itself just by taking a trip down the stairs.

£120 laptop for £30 - Result!

[JohnLWG]

Re: Success story!

Nice! i had a similar experience with a toshiba P305 I bought to part out. The guy who owned it said he had a tech replace the fan and when he got it back it would turn on. So he decided to get rid of it. The "tech" had forgotten to tighten the CPU in place, and I was able to get it running and tested (but still parted it out)

Sometimes I get lucky, and sometimes I realize after buying a broken laptop that there is several ounces of liquid popcorn butter evenly distributed across the motherboard, but thats another story...

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Success story!

I decided to unscrew the fan and heatsink. Upon lifting the heatsink, the CPU came straight out with it.

Put the CPU back in place and turned the screw to lock her in place, hey presto, it posts first time!

Somehow the screw had managed to unlock itself just by taking a trip down the stairs.

£120 laptop for £30 - Result!

Fixed the same on a laptop that belonged to a friend's GF... her cat pulled on the cord and the laptop fell from the bed, and refused to work afterwards. After cleaning all the fur in the cooling assembly, i unscrewed it to have the CPU fall off. Fit the CPU back in and locked the socket, job done.

[techboyBG]

Re: Success story!

I like easy jobs like this.

[inflex]

Re: Success story!

I like easy jobs like this.

Quite right... had a machine that a client was sick of, turned out it was just a dud stick of memory and a dud GFX card (bad cap). That said, when it comes to laptops, still no big-easy winners, but trying with a Toshiba C655 right now *fingers crossed*.