Note that the laptop did not have working sound before I began this test. I tried everything previously to get it to work, with system restores, downloading drivers, etc.
My girlfriend's mom informed me that the laptop was acting strange before it completely died with random resets. Eventually, it failed to show any picture, even though the lights and fan turn on. Trying to find the issue, I started to disassemble the laptop, removing parts and attempting to turn it on to see what would happen. Eventually, i tested everything down to the motherboard, and assumed that this had to be the problem.
At this point, I had three choices: I could either use a heat gun to the graphics card like many do to reseat it like many do, I could try the towel trick like with xboxes like some do, or I could put it in the oven, like crazy people do. Not having a heat gun and nothing to lose at the moment, I tried the towel trick for two hours. After letting it cool down and power back up, I finally had a breakthrough, 4 beeps.
Now, these 4 beeps were last night, and today the sound is not working again. I'm assuming that heating the machine allowed the audio device to reseat itself for a while? I'm not sure. The good news, however, is that these 4 beeps usually present a RAM problem if I am correct, which means it is not the graphics or motherboard. So, I tried to reseat the RAM, to find that it still did not work. After trying this, I decided to check out the ram. The RAM is 2x2gb DIMM chips. After looking into the machine, I discovered that the motherboard only supports up to 2x1gb of RAM.
So here is my question: is it possible that my problem is only the compatibility of this RAM, even though it was running for so long before? That is, is it possible that the motherboard has developed issues now because of this ram. Or could it be that the ram is just bad at this point?
Or is it more likely that it is still a motherboard/graphics problem and I should work on that area to fix it? Thanks in advance.
UPDATE: I did the towel trick for another 2 hours, let it cooled, and then stuck some of the ram back in and the machine turned on! When it turned on, it did 2 very loud beeps however. I wanted to test it with all the parts back in, so i put the keyboard and hdd back in, and then it wouldn't turn on again and there was no sound. I tried taking out the ram to see if it would beep, and it didn't. I'm assuming the heating allowed for it to go back into place, but me moving it before it was cooled enough caused it to mess up again?
Edited by howtheflip, 06 October 2012 - 01:07 PM.
Sign In
Create Account
