Packard Bell MZ36 not booting up

[smrman]

Hi guys,

bought an MZ36 for my parents (T2080 dual core), second hand. Ran fine for about one month, when my parents came to me and said the laptop did not work any more. After having a look, it seemed that :

- power was still there, after pressing the power button the fan starts running at max (which is normal the first second or so) and stays that way, HD spins up and DVD gets juice as well.
- screen remains black, no BIOS text, no beeps, nothing; no external VGA signal either
- AC or battery same results

What I tried so far was :
- removing all unnecessary components, HD / DVD / RAM (tested per slot, per module to minimize chance that both slots / both modules were cause)
- removing battery
- FN / screen key, to see if perhaps signal was sent external instead of LCD; but since HD was not continuing to boot I thought this may not be the case anyway

I today installed a new (second hand) CPU, to see if that perhaps had died. No new results, all the same. (by the way, excellent PDF from PB to fully take apart every bit of the laptop !!)

My parents reported, that after leaving the laptop for a bit, they came back and Windows had frozen (mouse pointed not moving, no keyboard response, but Windows desktop shown). Dad also mentioned over the last few days it seemed the monitor had dimmed a bit, but I am not sure about this as it could also mean they accidentally hit the fn key to dim, or as the laptop does generally, had not seen the brightness improve after recovering from standby (takes about half a minute to reach full brightness).

So now what would you recommend ? Someone already mentioned to me, that if all devices get power, it probably is not a dead mainboard, is this true ? Of course there still is an option that both CPU's are dead, but I prefer to think this is not the case.

Oh, I also ordered such a mini PCI diagnostic card for just a few euros, anyone tried those ?

Well, I still hope to get the thing working, having 250 Gb, 3 Gb RAM and a dual core CPU at 1.7 Ghz the machine is still very very well usable even if around 3 years old.

All your comments are extremely welcome, you can speak nerd language (have been screwing around with computers long enough to know most of my way

cheers,
Henk-Jan

 

[eraser4400]

greetings !

It seems you`ve got any problems with the graphics card in your lap !
The cooling-system in the consumer PB's are often not one of the best, you know...

If there's no anything showing at the display, -but all components obviously having power- the graphics card seems getting overheated and crashed...

The best you can do, is to send it to your supporter/service and let repair it there.

Notebooks ain't having a graphics accelerator seperately like desktops.
It's on the mainboard, like an onboard-gpu in desktops...

But changing the mainboard (and thats absolutely necessary) is an expensive thing, not surely, how many in UK (if you're coming from there) but here in germany you pay 400€ for that service...

if it's so, the game is not worth the candle, not really !

 

[smrman]

Hi eraser4400

thanks for taking the time to reply !

as far as I remember, there is an ATI chip on the mainboard, without fan. Well, perhaps the diag board tells me a bit more; trying to get new mainboards indeed is not worth it, unless someone sells his broken MZ36 with an other fault...

Cheers,
HJ