Everyone, Let's try and guess what's wrong with my computer...

Lac3y

Daemon Poster
Messages
1,110
Yesterday I posted a topic about me getting a new laptop. Well, this is because my other laptop broke and I'm getting a new one on the insurance.

Now, before I claimed I took it to a repair shop and they couldn't tell me what was wrong, and the insurance people have took it away to do their own anaylsis. However, things like this bug me so I just have to know what is wrong.

The Laptop:

Samsung V25
Pentium 4
2.66GHz
30GD HDD
512MB RAM

The Symptoms you ask? Read below:

Over the past couple of weeks my laptop got very hot. However, I just thought it was because I use it quite a lot on a/c power. Then, one day it started running very slow. I am very careful about spyware and viruses and scan my laptop everyday, so I ran a scan with adaware. It only found one infection but when it deleted it my laptop ran fine again.

However, everytime I switched my laptop on it was running slow, and after about a week even adaware wasn't kicking it into running fine again.

So I took it to a shop, they said two fans at the top of the unit weren't working, so he fixed them, but my laptop still ran slow.

I took it home and ran some tests with sandra and a processor speed tool. The processor speed tool found that my processor was running perfectly, and I bought a new harddrive so it ain't that.

The only thing I can think of is the motherboard, but I am merely a common mortal.

What do you guys think? Is my laptop gone forever? Or will the insurance company be able to fix it (I hope not)?

Thanks
 
I'm thinking that the heat issue you had probably was making it run slow and took some life off the cpu, and the fans that were broken contributed to that. When things get real hot inside a computer, they start to burn up, and get slow, and they're slow forever.
 
Definitely overheating. Pentiums have built-in overheat protection. What they do is slow down when they start to reach their threshold. That would explain the slowdown in performance. As for the continued problem, either the fans didn't get fixed properly or there was some permanent damage.
 
Lac3y... The computer repair shop couldnt tell you what was wrong? That's soo sad... My IT teacher at my school told the class of a similar story:

This guy had problems booting w/ his laptop. This laptop wouldnt last five to fifteen minutes being turned on and the bottom was hot every time and kept shutting down... He took it to Geek Squad at some BestBuy and you know what they did? They ran AV, defrag, spybot, etc. and couldnt figure it out for hours. Fortunately, my IT teacher worked there and figured it out in less than five minutes... He inspected the laptop and found a lot of lint and dust balls where the fans were. They were big and almost caked on such that the fan couldnt turn. Obviously, it was overheating... Isnt that why the bottom is so hot? Anyway, my teacher replaced the fan and applied some thermal grease thingy and the laptop worked.
 
spank_fusion said:
Geek Squad.... what a joke. A grossly overpriced one at that.

and they drive those gay little VW's too! haha

heat is a big issue with a laptop since everything is all crammed in there with not much room for air circulation, if a fan goes out or you get a lot of dust in there that doesn't allow air to circulate, you're screwed. you can get a laptop cooler that you set the laptop on though, those help, or I've heard.
 
Thanks for the info

So, do you guys think that it is repairable (I mean will it be cheaper than buying a laptop)?

Cos it is a couple years old and I'm not sure if any parts are available for it anymore
 
probably repairable, but it'll cost you an arm and a leg to get it repaired. I would just buy a new, better laptop
 
Tommy Boy said:
probably repairable, but it'll cost you an arm and a leg to get it repaired. I would just buy a new, better laptop

Well, you see the thing is, I've sent it to the insurance people so I'm kinda hoping it will be cheaper just to buy a new laptop so they'll just give me a new one (I've got a new for old policy so I'll either get a similar spec laptop or a better one)

One can only hope!
 
spank_fusion said:
Geek Squad.... what a joke. A grossly overpriced one at that.

I agree... I hear they charge like $130 - $230 just to install software or hardware: http://www.geeksquad.com/servicesandpricing/onsiteservices.php

You know what I believe? I believe the real Geek Squad is us and these forums
biggrin.gif
 
Back
Top Bottom