Compaq Presario 1800T laptop (PIII, 650Mhz, 10GB HDD, w2K, 390MB RAM) with what appears to be a hardware problem.

April 5, 2004 3:19 PM

I've got a Compaq Presario 1800T laptop (PIII, 650Mhz, 10GB HDD, w2K, 390MB RAM) with what appears to be a hardware problem. More inside...

Pressing the power button yields the following sets of results: 1. Nine times out of ten, you hear the powersupply kick in, but no splash screen. The laptop sits there idling with no screen. Can't get into setup. Press and hold power switch to hard kill. 2. One time out of 10, it boots, but horrible noises (not adjustable through hardware volume controls) come out of speakers during boot, and thereafter when any action requiring processing is performed (even moving mouse cursor causes whining). When it boots this way, volume control is missing from systray. 3. One time out of, say, 30 attempts yields a normal boot.
What's going on, and how do I fix it, or to whom should I send it to be fixed?

posted by gnz2001 to computers & internet (6 comments total)

no real advice for you, but i had 2 compaq presario laptops. nothing but problems for me. first off they run way too hot. one would constanly reboot after shutdown unless i pressed the buttion to shut it down.
i spilled juice on one and nothing happened. it just made the F keys stick. it really wasnt much juice. the computer ran fine for months. then i was using dial up during a lightning storm and it got zapped. the thing would act like it was booting and but the screen was blank.
so i sent it in to compaq to be fixed. i had insurance on it of some sort. my grandpa bought it for me. i assumed if i didnt tell them what really happened they would fix it. well they refused to fix it because they said there was "spillage." they saw that and then decided not to touch or see what was wrong. they said it would cost more to fix it than to buy a new one. i never got it back.
i told them what really happened and they still said it doesnt matter there is "spillage."
posted by Recockulous at 4:11 PM on April 5, 2004

Sounds like an integrated peripheral, most likely the sound chip, is hosed. When you do get that normal boot, you might try dashing into the BIOS and disabling your integrated sound card to see if that makes any difference. Not getting a POST (power on self test) or any error beepcodes is a bad, bad sign.

In any case, it's most likely that only compaq service would touch it, and it won't be cheap if they will fix it at all.

Try this, too.

Good luck.
posted by ulotrichous at 5:32 PM on April 5, 2004

The sound coming from the speakers, is it somewhat akin to a whine? Does it sound like a PC speaker could recreate that sound? Your power supply may be going out. Do you still have it under warranty? (I doubt it)

Try the sound chip thing. You could take the laptop apart and see if anything is obviously wrong (such as wires crossing, damage to mainboard, small burns, etc) If your not comfortable taking a laptop apart.... well if it gets worse your going to have to buy a new laptop.
posted by Keyser Soze at 6:13 PM on April 5, 2004

I don't know if i am alone on this, but I tried to take my HP Pavillion ze5270 laptop apart and couldn't get the damn thing open. Got all the screws and all that, but something wouldn't budge. Maybe its not as easy as it seems to just "take it apart"...?
posted by jerseygirl at 6:50 PM on April 5, 2004

Taking it apart is easy - getting it back together is the hard part.
posted by dg at 10:06 PM on April 5, 2004

ulotrichous, You may well be right. The input/output jacks for audio are now misaligned with the case. Additionally, years ago, the output jack was harshly tugged on by a pair of headphones when someone got up to get a beer.

Keyser: the sound has an underlying whine component. But it is a mere background to the loud crackle-pop-hiss that comes out of the speakers as it boots, or opens a program or large file.
posted by gnz2001 at 9:25 AM on April 6, 2004