Re: Alienware M17x R2 no power, no lights, no sound, no boot? Battery not charging ei

Ya you can try to remove the video card daughterboard if there is one and see if it will boot up using the integrated intel graphic card.

Re: Panasonic TV has 2 inch vertical line.

Yes it was purchased brand new. I know it has warranty on it but I am still curious to find out what the problem maybe....

I purchased a Panasonic 60" plasma (TCP60GT50) about a month ago. A week ago I heard a "pop" sound coming from the unit when I turned it on. The unit now has a 2.5 inch wide black vertical line on the left side of the display. The area on the left seems to just not display anything. Given the noise I heard, I presume it's a popped capacitor. I have a lot of experience repairing computers, but I don't have any experience repairing TVs and Panasonic has been less than helpful in terms of sending out a tech to look at it.

Any advise in terms of what may be the problem...

Re: Alienware M17x R2 no power, no lights, no sound, no boot? Battery not charging ei

Normally if a laptop is not posting, the first thing to do is remove the battery, hook up the AC adapter, hold the power button for 4 seconds and then power it on and see how it goes.

If that doesn't work then you take out the RAM sticks and replace them with known good ones and boot it up again. Should that fail then you can start replacing the CPU and the video card daughter board if there is one. If the video card is soldered to the main board then I am afraid you are dead in...

Re: hdd smart error

You can't really remove a SMART error from an HDD. SMART is supposed to give you a heads up about imminent HDD failure.

Whenever a HDD gives you a SMART errors the first step is always to image the HDD or back it up manually if you are not familiar with imaging. Once that's done I normally either send it out for warranty replacement if applicable or use it for none critical data until it kicks the bucket.