Gateway MX6439

[Nerwin]

This is one of the most strangest problems I have ever come by before.

The owner bought this laptop around 3 years ago, used it for about a year and then it just died. It was the battery, so they got a new one and it worked for a few months and then it just died. The warranty ran out and so they brought it to Geeksquad at Bestbuy and they couldn't even fix it and charged them a outrageous price! ($150)

The owner is my uncles sister, so my uncle told her about me and said I can most likely fix it and when he brought it to my house, I got the laptop running in about 20 minutes.

The first time it didn't turn on, I took out the ram and reseated it opposite slots and it worked!

Restarted the laptop, didn't work again.

Did the ram change and reseated it, didn't work.

Took the CPU out and reseated that, worked.

Restarted the laptop, didn't work.

Took the battery out and put it back in, worked.

Plugged in the AC adapter, still working

Restarted, started up successful.

Restarted, went into the BIOS, ran test and reset the battery. It took about 10 hours to reset the battery and every since then it's been working great, until this morning.

I just restarted it after doing some updates and it wouldn't want to start again.

Took the battery out, put it back in, didn't work

Took the battery out, plugged in the AC adapter, didn't work.

Put the battery back in, started up successfully.

This is very confusing, I have no idea what is going on with it.

Right now I thinking it is over heating cause it does get pretty hot but it never crashed.

This morning it was sleeping and I went to go use it and you have to hit the power button to turn it back in and it always have turned on from that, but this time it didn't even work, it just turned off.

Right now it setting beside me and it's up and running.

Anyone know whats happening? There can be so many reasons, just wanted some help.

Thanks!

[bonestonne]

If you take it apart, how's the leads coming from the battery? Or better yet, is it even clean in there? You may simply just have something causing a short in the laptop, possibly a bad capacitor, etc. If the battery is good, and the power adapter is good, check the system board. You may have to take apart the entire laptop, you may rebuild it only to have a few extra parts that you can't remember where they went, but you'll have found a problem by then. My Thinkpad T22 laptop recently decided to give me a kernel panic no matter what I was doing, I decided to swap the RAM between the two slots, and now it runs great again (and is going to college with me).

I'd say there's just some capacitor or circuit that's failed, possibly a cold solder joint somewhere, something like that. Leave the laptop unplugged for a few minutes, take out the battery, and then hold down the power button for about 90 seconds. Afterwards, plug it back in while holding the power button. After that, try turning it on. If it turns on after that, let it run for a while and then try simply turning it off, and turning it back on normally. If you have to constantly hold down the power button to get it to start, it's because a capacitor is not draining. It's not a fix I could tell you, when electronics reach that point, I wouldn't be able to tell you what to do, that's my exit point.

I have a philips HDTV which has loads of problems, but can't seem to solve it (although i know the basic problems) so i hold onto it, and deal (eventually it'll get fixed). If holding the power button doesn't work, or any of those tricks don't seem to work, i think you're SOL, but it's worth a shot before giving up.

[Nerwin]

Thanks for your help. I think I am just going to reinstall the operating system as well.

Right now I been turning it on and off and it's been working fine.

I'll keep an eye on it, I been stress testing it.

I wrote this using the laptop and as you can tell it's working. But I think I will do some more diagnostic testing on it.

Thanks again.

EDIT

The laptop will not even turn on now, No mater what I do.

I think the best that I can do is get their data off their laptop and put it in a cd and say sorry theres not much that I could do.

Thanks for your help anyways, I will be trying a couple more things before I give up, but I think it's done for.

Edited September 3, 2009 by Nerwin

[Nerwin]

New Problem:

I can now turn the laptop on every time by holding the power button down while taking the battery out and putting the battery back in while holding the power button down. Doing this will turn the laptop on.

Also the fan like never every comes on so I don't know if that's a related problem or not.

I'm also thinking it could be something to do when the computer sleeps or something. I reinstalled the operating system and now it seems to restart with out shutting down like before.

I have no idea whats going on. Theres just so many factors if the problem that it is hard to diagnose.

But I am thinking that is something to do with a failed circuit or capacitor.

[03GrandAmGT]

Had a similar problem with a friends laptop earlier this year with the same symptoms. Upon checking the obvious power cords, power output from the power supply, my arm bumped the power cord going into the back of the laptop and the system shutdown. What this was was the power connector on the motherboard was loose/broken around the solder pads on the PCB. After replacing the power jack the system powered up and stayed powered with no problems. There appears to be quite a few laptops that experience this issue.

John

[ripken204]

Had a similar problem with a friends laptop earlier this year with the same symptoms. Upon checking the obvious power cords, power output from the power supply, my arm bumped the power cord going into the back of the laptop and the system shutdown. What this was was the power connector on the motherboard was loose/broken around the solder pads on the PCB. After replacing the power jack the system powered up and stayed powered with no problems. There appears to be quite a few laptops that experience this issue.

John

happened to one of mine, had to go through the process of soldering a new one on and all.

so nick, try holding the plug in a different positions to see if u can get it to stay on.

[Nerwin]

It's not the plug.... if it was the plug then the laptop should turn on with a fully charged battery.

Doesn't matter if it's plugged in or on a battery.

Theres only one way to start it now, which is to hold the power button and take out the battery and put it back in while holding the power button and then it will start.

[jcarle]

Try this. Unplug the laptop. Remove the battery. With no battery or power plugged in, hold the power button 15 seconds. Release. Install battery only. Does it boot up? Do the same thing again, but the second time, try to start it with no battery and the power plugged in only, does it boot then?

[Nerwin]

Nope, it did not boot up on either attempts.

It can turned off for DAYS and what every I was doing last on it will still be on.

Like few days ago I was uninstalling something and firefox was open and just today I got it to turn on and firefox was still open and on a website.

I can pull the battery out and keep it out and keep it unplugged and it still remembers the last thing I was doing. I don't know.. it's strange.

[jcarle]

Are you sure the battery is fully charged? Because it sounds like the laptop's not charging properly, battery runs out and it saves the contents of memory to the hard drive using hibernation and then once it finally gets enough charge, it boots. Some laptops (not sure about the gateway you have) will not function without a battery because of the way the charging / power circuit is built. If you're saying that the laptop was working fine before with a new battery and that the battery stopped charging properly and eventually the laptop died fully, it's all things that point to the power / charging circuit. By that I mean the power adapter, the plug, the circuit inside the laptop and the battery.

If you have a multi-meter, try checking the power plug of the power adapter to make sure it's sending the correct voltage. Shake the cables around a bit while you're checking the voltage to see if it varies. Also, check to see what the battery's voltage is at.

If everything comes back clean with the battery and the charging circuit, and all... it could be a faulty motherboard. I remember one laptop I repaired, if you put a bit of pressure on the back right side of the laptop, it would shut off. The twisting of the shell from the opening and closing of the monitor eventually caused cracking of the motherboard circuit. After replacing the motherboard, everything was fine.

Edited September 8, 2009 by jcarle