HP ZE4400 laptop lights up for one second, then powers down

[frank_rizzo]

Hi all,

I came across this forum after searching for anything pertinent to my problems...I couldn't find anything, so I'm posting. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

So I have this laptop a friend gave me; she told me that it just stopped working one day (wouldn't turn on) so she said if I wanted it, I could have it. I have replaced many laptop motherboards and screens, so I thought yeah, I'll take it.

Here's what it does. If I plug in the AC adapter, the battery charges just fine. If I push the power button, all the LEDs behind the buttons turn on for about a second (which it would do normally). Instead of booting, though, it just turns off. The first time I do this, the CPU fan spins for a second. If I try to turn it on again, it won't spin the fan; however, if I unplug it, then plug it back in, it'll try to spin the fan once, like before. If I unplug it and run it on the battery, it'll leave the LEDs on for a fraction of a second longer, but then powers down with no spinning of hard drive or fan just like I described above.

I've torn the thing apart to where I have the motherboard and power switch connected to the battery and nothing else, looking for blown capacitors or anything else out of place on the motherboard. No capacitors looked damaged, but what I did notice was that an ant had crawled through a cooling vent and died on the motherboard. He was laying across a few resistors and transistors, so I'm wondering if his presence shorted something and now even though I've removed the ant, the damage has been done.

I'm pretty sure the motherboard is the cause of this failure, even if the ant didn't cause the problem...I couldn't imagine anything else failing that would cause the system to not try to spin the hard drive or fan and not have it be something on the motherboard. I guess I wanted to run the story by some people to see if someone knows more than me, and could confirm or dis-confirm what I suspect.

Any help, again, is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

--Frank

[cguan_77]

agree with you could be a bad mobo, maybe those BGA's and IC's are not functioning well, faulty BGA's and IC's cannot be noticed unless it's blown up, some way to check which chip is causing the problem you need to take it back to those troubleshooting guys, spectrum analyzer, oscilloscopes can tell which chip is causing the problem... better buy a new one.. LOL.. ;)

[frank_rizzo]

Bollocks...got a refurb motherboard off of eBay, installed it and it didn't work. That was a pain. Sent the original board to a repair shop in Santa Clara, they told me a BGA went bad and it would cost $215 to fix. I told them to dump the board, it's just not worth that, plus a new battery, plus RAM. Oh well.

edit: wow, didn't know b*llocks was a bad word on forums now. (that would be the first word in my original post)

[crnnrc]

same thing happens to mine- im thinking of buying a motherboard so i shouldnt??? this computer has so much music and pictures that im willing to put a new board in just to get them oue - someone lemme know what you think - i hit the on switch and it kicks off - HOWEVER when this whole thing staretd i managed to get it on once and left it on but once the heat got too high it turned off andnever kcked on again

[frank_rizzo]

same thing happens to mine- im thinking of buying a motherboard so i shouldnt???

i'd be wary if you're buying used or a refurbished board. If you do make sure you buy one with a warranty, and make sure you don't do anything to violate that warranty. My warranty required the board to be installed by a "certified technician", otherwise it was void. When I returned it I simply lied and said "my technician said" instead of "I saw". I don't know if you would be so lucky.

this computer has so much music and pictures that im willing to put a new board in just to get them out

the computer doesn't have the music and pictures, it's the hard drive that has all that. you can buy a usb adapter that allow you to plug in a laptop hard drive to a desktop computer, then access it just like a normal hard drive. i bought one for $25 at my local Fry's, but they're common in any reasonable computer shop. if you're not comfortable with pulling the hard drive out and doing that yourself, then ask a computer savvy friend to do it for you. If you want to resurrect the laptop then look into a new board, but don't do it just to get your files, you can do that for $25. Local computer shops may have a service that would do it for you, but they'll probably charge you and arm and a leg.

someone lemme know what you think - i hit the on switch and it kicks off - HOWEVER when this whole thing staretd i managed to get it on once and left it on but once the heat got too high it turned off andnever kcked on again

sounds exactly like what mine was doing, and what seemed to be a legit repair shop told me $215. the thing is, if you buy a refurb board that, say, had a bad power jack, who knows how long until a bga (or other component) on that one goes bad? it's definitely a risk. i don't know why laptops seem to finicky...i've never once had a desktop piece of hardware just go "bad" on me. maybe it's the heat of the enclosed space, the additional moving around, etc.

[PcTestCard.com]

I have seen a lot of laptops with similar problem causing by the power management part failure/ electric shockand thus caused the damaged to the system chipset.

Most of the time, the shocked power management part on the laptop may caused by other objects like the "ant" in your instance, others just like spilled soft drinks while the laptop is running. (some laptops are just lucky enough and done no damage at all after remove battery and AC adapter and dry up the coke droplets on the mobo, then press the power button!)

I should have informed you about this similar situation if I have seen your posting earlier.
Have you exchange the board with that eBayer?

Hope this helps!
Bill

[cguan_77]

when buying a board...better buy at an authorized distributor...it has a warranty...if just buy from somebody else..even though it's cheap...but it might be unstable...