Samsung P28 Laptop - dead, help ...

[aidanodr]

Hi Guys,

I have a Samsung P28 I just got from a company I deal with, if I fix it its mine. When I press the on button, I hear the CD Drive and thats it. Re the set of lights up over the keyboard, the right most light [ I think its the WiFi light ] comes on. Nothing on the screen, power light on left is on. I reseated the ram last night - it booted up to the safe mode/ last best XP menu, I went in as normal, it reached windows, started the XP blue screen of death and then shut down. Out of 20 startups the above may happen once. Also their is no beeps from the unit in this state.

Any ideas what this could be? My thoughts are RAM issues, unfortunately I do not have any replacement RAM. Is their any undocumented boot sequences, factory resets, reset key combinations at boot etc ?

Cheers
Aidan

[raybay]

Most commonly in that model, the hard drive has gone bad, and is easily replaced. Did they give you the recovery disc set that comes with it? If so, buy a new hard drive - $50 to$90 depending on size ( I like the Seagate with their five-year warranty ) remove the drive by removing those little screws, then you will find the hard drive solidly screwed into a "caddy". You take out the old one, being careful not to lose the screws, insert the new one. Boot to the recovery disc and allow it to install the original software.

If the screen will not come on, or if it fades to one side or top to bottom, that is likely the LCD inverter. That little bugger isn't cheap ($75 to $141), is hard to get, and is difficult to install. It can easily cost $150 to have it replaced by a laptop repair shop.

I am betting on a defective hard drive... they use reliable Toshiba, Hitachi, or Samsung in that model, but they all fail sooner or later.

Other possibilities: It had an impact from the side or the bottom. You can get access to the case through removing the keyboard. Then remove and reseat every component. Sometimes in a laptop, parts come loose and only need to be reconnected.

[Baradaran]

Hi all,

It seems this post is pretty new, and one of my customers is having the same problem with exactly the same notebook, Samsung P28. The creen goes blue while working, there is a white cursor pretty in the middle of the screen.

I disassembled and cleaned all the system, especially the mainboard, as I thought the customer had poured some tea on the system. It helped, the system was working fine for about an hour, several on and offs without any negative result. About 2 hours after I handed over the system, the client called me up and had the same problem as before.

I got the laptop again, backed-up all data, cleaned it up, this time using a brush to clean the mainboard, it made the laptop work another two hours.

I am certain, there is nothing wrong with the software, nor there is any problem with the HDD. The RAMs are also working fine. I checked all USB-plugs, there was no dirt in. There was a little tiny dust in the VGA output, but I do not believe there is anything wrong with that. Has anyone tried taking out the wireless card? It is located under the keyboard under a metal cover. You can pull out the black and white cable, and take out the wireless card. That may help.

________________

Most commonly in that model, the hard drive has gone bad, and is easily replaced. Did they give you the recovery disc set that comes with it? If so, buy a new hard drive - $50 to$90 depending on size ( I like the Seagate with their five-year warranty ) remove the drive by removing those little screws, then you will find the hard drive solidly screwed into a "caddy". You take out the old one, being careful not to lose the screws, insert the new one. Boot to the recovery disc and allow it to install the original software.

If the screen will not come on, or if it fades to one side or top to bottom, that is likely the LCD inverter. That little bugger isn't cheap ($75 to $141), is hard to get, and is difficult to install. It can easily cost $150 to have it replaced by a laptop repair shop.

I am betting on a defective hard drive... they use reliable Toshiba, Hitachi, or Samsung in that model, but they all fail sooner or later.

Other possibilities: It had an impact from the side or the bottom. You can get access to the case through removing the keyboard. Then remove and reseat every component. Sometimes in a laptop, parts come loose and only need to be reconnected.

[Baradaran]

I tried out taking out the wireless card, it worked another 2 hours, but the issue was not solved!!!

[Baradaran]

I managed to set back the date to 2006, and it is working... let's see how long it lasts.

[castanea]

Hi

I have exactly the same problem which developped yesterday on my Samsung P28.

I tried repeatedly to restart the machine and only a couple of times I was able to get the login screen but then the machine freezes.

I do not think it is the HDD as when the Bios allows it it does go through the start-up process, otherwise black screen.

Cleaned the components as suggested earlier but without success. Would welcome any more suggestions.

Thanks

[castanea]

Hi again

I just fitted the P28 HDD in another machine and it worked perfectly.

I tried another HDD in the faulty P28 but it also froze so it must be something to do with the Bios.

I will try to speak to Samsung tomorrow and seee what they have to say for this strange issue.

Will keep youy advised.

regards

[Baradaran]

I dis- and reassembled the whole machine again, this time making sure to clean everything. I even cleaned the backside of the plastic plates preventing shortcuts. The machine ran for an hour without any problems, but as soon as I tried to move it, it froze. I tried to find out by pushing and squeezing it, but it did not freeze. I pulled up the right side for about half an inch and let it fall down, it remained stable. I did the same to the left side, and it hung.

When you turn the laptop upside down, then the CPU is on the right side, the same spot that caused the hanging after I let the laptop fall down. My next try is to open the cooler and clean the whole area, and fix whatever is loose there.

[Baradaran]

I got it. I took out the processor, brushed around it, and reinserted it. It is playing "The Incredibles" perfectly. I tried shaking it, lifting each corner up for about half an inch and letting it fall, whatever I did, it kept functioning.

I hope it helps you, too.

[Gilles Hebert]

I would check if my hard drive is full and may not leave you enough memoery to start it up.

[Gilles Hebert]

try to sart it in safe mode which requier less memory and go into you system on the control panel and see how much free sapce you got left

[simickeyp]

I'm new to laptops myself, used to a good old tower PC. Anyways I've recently purchased a Samsung P28 as 'spares and repair'. The intial problems I was aware of was: There was no HDD as it was a former 'company laptop' and that every 2nd or so time you turn her on (to boot to bios) she would turn on but with no screen.
I've later found that when she doesn't turn on the screen at boot, you can hear that most other things sit there like a dumb lump. For instance the fan powers down quite rapid, but the CD/DVDRW continues to react normally.
I heard from a friend of a friend who knows a lot more about laptops than I, he felt that she needed a bios flash, which I downloaded and flashed bios today (flash was downloaded from www.samsungpc.com, it did say it was new, don't know if that makes any difference?). After the flash of bios she seems a little more unreliable, maybe 1 in 5-10.
Simply put any ideas? All ideas are very welcomed.

[gigigigi]

Hi Guys,

I have a Samsung P28 I just got from a company I deal with, if I fix it its mine. When I press the on button, I hear the CD Drive and thats it. Re the set of lights up over the keyboard, the right most light [ I think its the WiFi light ] comes on. Nothing on the screen, power light on left is on. I reseated the ram last night - it booted up to the safe mode/ last best XP menu, I went in as normal, it reached windows, started the XP blue screen of death and then shut down. Out of 20 startups the above may happen once. Also their is no beeps from the unit in this state.

Any ideas what this could be? My thoughts are RAM issues, unfortunately I do not have any replacement RAM. Is their any undocumented boot sequences, factory resets, reset key combinations at boot etc ?

Cheers
Aidan

hi to all
There is the answer for all P28 samsung there is no ram or hardrive or any easy fault.the most common problem is the south bridge bga ati IXP150 218S2EBNA46 like the all ati product good just few company like samsung toshiba or hp t having probleme with dry joint issue.there is just one way how to fix it get bga machine and reflow with multicore flux cream.usualy the latop works if you bang the keyboard arround the number 8 when then press the power button and the laptop works .
i ix few motherbard and all works wihout having the same pobleme i set on the bga long profile slow welding and ajust the mling point of solder to 211C and 218.The melting point of solder is 200C.
any question please feel free to ask

[captain_pugwash]

Hello

My P28 has broken for the second time with exactly the same problem that you see. I had it repaired with a new motherboard the first time. Now it's broken again with the same fault (2 years each time).

I guess I'll be able to replace the mobo cheaper than geting someone else to do it.

However, I can't figure out how to open the case. I've removed all the screws from the back of the case, but there seem to be a few screws across the middle of the case still holding it together - possibly screwed front to back from under the keyboard, but I can't see how to remove it.

Any suggestions.....

Thanks

[heathbm]

hi im new here and have a samsung p28 it's as slow as hell!!! and would relly like it to work better. it's. only 254 ram or something so cant upgrade to vista let alone windows7 any ideas...

ps: ideas that dont involve changing the ram or hd (hard drive).
thanx. ;)

[condowallace]

Hi everyone
Recently I've been having the same problem with my p28 (been running sweet for years with various upgrades) and after reading through the thread I would have to agree with gigigigi in that the graphics is to blame. I've been running windows 7 on it for nearly a year and it seems to have better diagnostics than xp, since the 'action centre' told me that there's a problem with my video card and asscociated drivers. To be honest the problem was detected when win 7 was first installed cause I the action centre message was dated round about that time, I must have just ignored it - laptop was running fine afterall. Having all the symptoms thats been described: crashing to blue screen, random freezing with no error messages, having black screen after power on- hdd and cd drive responding properly, and knocking the underside near cpu reviving it for a few hours. I've also tried a different hdd, ram chips, and even a different cpu but all had no effect.
All of you will probably have sorted it out by now, one way or another, but thought i'd confirm the cause of the problems. :)

[elsiekins]

This thread is old please start new thread

Hi everyone
Recently I've been having the same problem with my p28 (been running sweet for years with various upgrades) and after reading through the thread I would have to agree with gigigigi in that the graphics is to blame. I've been running windows 7 on it for nearly a year and it seems to have better diagnostics than xp, since the 'action centre' told me that there's a problem with my video card and asscociated drivers. To be honest the problem was detected when win 7 was first installed cause I the action centre message was dated round about that time, I must have just ignored it - laptop was running fine afterall. Having all the symptoms thats been described: crashing to blue screen, random freezing with no error messages, having black screen after power on- hdd and cd drive responding properly, and knocking the underside near cpu reviving it for a few hours. I've also tried a different hdd, ram chips, and even a different cpu but all had no effect.
All of you will probably have sorted it out by now, one way or another, but thought i'd confirm the cause of the problems. :)

[paul75]

hi i have a p28 which started doing this what i do is press f2 as soon as it starts up to go to bios i reset the date to 1981 and save the bios then my computer started up fine, only problem was when i went on the net it would not reconise some sites due to incorrect date so after an hour or so off working fine i went into control panel and set the date back to the correct one, my p28 has been working ok for a few days now just hope it lasts hope this helps

[p.105]

Hi my P28 isn't coming on. I press the power button all the lights come on but no screen, I have connected an external screen but this also doesn't work. Some times when it starts the screen is very very faint for about a second then disappears, please help..