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Dissassmbled laptop and now it does not work. 1

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rosie78

Technical User
Feb 20, 2003
6
CA
I've disasembled by notebook in order to find the video chip. I unscrewed the visible screws and took apart hard drive, RAM (and i guess mother board is underneath), CD-rom and something called controller. anyways, after putting everyhthing back properl;y (or at least that's what i thought), i can't turn on the computer. it beeps 5 times and the screen remains blank. what have i done and what should i do? i already tried cleaning everything and putting it back again.

help!
 
I'd suggest that you detail the make and model number so that anyone reading your post who's worked on same/similar can try and help, from my own experience laptops are a pain and some won't work due to some case screws being needed for grounding etc.

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Johnoddq
 
Laptops are very proprietary. No two are made the same. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.
 
It might be worth getting a proffesional laptop engineer to have a look at it if your not sure what your doing.

Laptop components can be quite easily damaged (although usually through improper opening/closing of the chasis, rather than handling of the components)
 
The brand i have is IBM T22-2647.

someone told me that hard drive has a special voltage and if you remove it voltage gets reset and if you put the wrong (reset) voltage HD back in, mother board can burn.
 
That makes no sense.

Processors require certain different voltages, which are often set by jumpers or in the BIOS. But even then, unless you changed a jumper nothing would happen. Hard drives run off 5V and 12V and are not software-configurable. Newposter
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."
 
is it possible that by taking apart a laptop i would somehow damage or burn BIOS or motherboard? and if yes, what exactly did i do to damage it (i.e. scratch a chip, change a wire, improper connection of RAM to the slot etc.)
 
Its unlikely that you've damaged anything (assuming you were careful and didn't force anything), but as advised above you might be best getting professional help.
 
is the memory seated properly and in the right orientation? Usually it is keyed to where you cannot do it wrong. did you bend any pins that take connectors? you might want to disasseble again and check every pin very closely...I have offset the hard drive cable by one pin before...do you have a manual which tells you what the beep code is? it helps to know the problem. did you have to undo any cables that are flat that slip into a slot and require little plastic holders be snapped into place? those things are quite often in notebooks and a royal pain...a cable may not be completely installed right. Did you touch anything that may have taken a static charge and damaged it? Check all the pins first to make sure you didn't beend the pins inside for a plug in cd-rom , floppy drive, hard drive...etc.
 
rosie78 - Actually, it is possible to burn up the MB with the hard drive.

A normal (desktop) hard drive has a power connector AND an IDE (40 pin) connector. In a laptop, both of these are (essentially) supplied through the ribbon cable.

If you hooked up the hard drive 180 degrees off, or you connected it and accidentally missed some pins, then when you power on, you could be applying voltage to the wrong pins on the hard drive. The result of that can be the burning of the motherboard. I have actually seen this.

I'm not saying that this has happened to you, just wanted to clear up that question for you.

Good luck! Mudskipper
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Groucho said it best- "A four year-old child could understand this!
Quick! Run out and find me a four year-old child: I can't make heads nor tails out of this!"
 
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