??? Wont Power On - HELP!!!

[arch3angel]

Hello everyone,

I took the HP Mini-Note apart to swap out the Broadcom wireless card for an Atheros wireless card someone on the board said worked just fine. The install went fine, I took my time and never ripped it apart paying close attention to the ribbon cables. I put it all back together and went to push the power button over to turn it on and see if the bios accepted the wifi card and nothing, no lights, no fans, no hard drive, no power to anything.

So I figure it may have something to do with wifi and maybe it was a blacklisted card. So I took it back apart and reinstalled the original Broadcom wireless card only to find the same crap, no power to anything.

I followed the directions in the threads that led me to the HP website for the removal and reinstallation of the parts. It does not appear as if anything was damaged during this process.

I am a computer tech for over 10 years now and know not to hack stuff up, but this one has me baffled as to the cause of the issue.

Any suggestions?

All suggestions are GREATLY appreciated as this laptop is virtually my life blood outside the house!!!

Thanks For The Help !!!

[mikez]

Pull both Wifi cards - zero (0) Wifi cards inside the machine, then try again.
If that works, and it is possible to reverse the Wifi card (an un-keyed connector) -
Then you will have a lead as to what happened.

You might try the obvious - see if there is still power to the AC adapter -
perhaps it got unplugged during the work on the machine.

[arch3angel]

The Wifi cards are keyed as seen in the HP video linked here:

http://h20181.www2.hp.com/plmcontent...C-36909E71194C

During the process of removing the components the A/C power pack was unplugged from the wall and the laptop. The battery was also removed during this same process and only reinserted when the entire system was put back together.

I was thinking the system had some sort of case intrusion system but found no evidence of this on the net. I also considered the chance that a connection I did not remove got unplugged, but not sure what connection this would be.

Has anyone ran into this same issue doing the same type of thing, replacing parts and have it not power on?

I just have this feeling it is something simple I am over looking

[gregw]

Did you get to the Power-On Self Test (POST) screen?

If it's just a blank screen with no reaction except a lit power LED, then it's the same symptoms as when the motherboard overheats and kills itself, which just happened to my Mininote yesterday when it crashed during sleep and powered on while in my bag with no ventilation..

If that's the case, you don't have a choice except to send it back to HP for a motherboard replacement, and yes, I think I've read messages about "new" Mininotes that spontaneously died without any cause..

[arch3angel]

When I slide the power button over to activate the system to turn on no LEDs come on, no fans kick on, nothing... It acts the same way yours would act if you tried to power the system on with the battery pack out of the system and no A/C Adapter plugged into the system.

This Mini-Note was given to me by an HP Rep the weekend of October 11th, 2008 after my name was drawn at a convention I attended, so it is fairly new itself.

Any other suggestions? :cry:

[gregw]

It sounds like the power switch cable itself maybe loose since there is no reaction at all to the switch.. That's different from my problem, since I know my Mininote is actually getting power due to the lighted LED on the power switch.

[mikez]

If no chance of mis-assembly (you report the connectors are keyed) then your
best bet is what you suspected - something that got "knocked lose" during the work.
- - - -
Having the spontaneous power supply failure _and_ just having finished working on
the machine (a failure independent of your work) is of course possible, but not
very likely. Your most likely scenario is a single point failure.
- - - -
What/Where? A good question.
Most things inside of the box would leave symptoms other than total power loss -
Check carefully around the power entry and power regulation corner of the board.
- - - -
There is no intrusion detect - some of the HP "customer upgrades" require that
the machine be opened - so they would have to mention how to reset it if present.

[arch3angel]

Whelp I ended up shipping the laptop to HP after putting all the original stuff back in and let me say WOW - I sent it in on a Monday around 11am and had it back Wednesday by 10am

They replaced the motherboard, I guess it is something common for this machines. The only thing that upset me was the fact they claimed the hard drive was also bad, which I know for a fact it was not. They replaced the drive and installed Windows Vista. I know for a fact the reason they replaced the drive was due to the password lock on the drive. The part of the drive swap that upsets me is it had all my email and other stuff I was working on.

On the funny side, they installed Windows Vista, however the system was shipped with SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED). When I asked them why they did that the lady told me "Sir, if you had Linux installed on this machine you violated your warranty as we do not support Linux on our machines.." I demanded that she send me the media and a Windows key certificate sticker for the bottom of the machine and she refused. I ended up getting pretty angry with her and advised her installing Windows on a machine without the key is illegal and refusing to provide the media is also illegal. She then offered to send the media but I am still without a key code. She says it is not required :?:

I just got done swapping back into the machine the Atheros wireless card and my 2GB memory. It booted just fine and Windows Vista seen the WiFi card but required drives, no biggy I will deal with that at a later time. I know many have asked about the Wireless card swap to an Atheros, I want to say it works fine and the number of the card I will have to get back to everyone on as I forgot which I went with.

All is good again, minus the loss of email/files, and the required use of Windows Vista till I can reformat the system and install Ubuntu again.

*** Note: DO NOT send your system back with any passwords as they will replace the drive to "resolve the failed drive" ***

[stefcep]

You opening the mininote probably had nothing to do with the failure you experienced. it seems to be a random motherboard failure which is common, and heat may or may not play a part in it.

[gregw]

One thing you could have done was to remove the HDD before returning the Mininote to HP. That's what I did when I sent it back to HP for a dead motherboard replacement, and HP support didn't bat an eye about that at all.