[nick2price]

Hi guys, bit of a silly question here I am afraid. My friends laptop broke, meaning that I could not even make it onto the desktop. As soon as I turned the power on, I would get an error message relating to the hardware, and had to switch off. I cant boot from a live cd using linux, or with the OS's disk. Thats another thing that leads me to believe its hardware related.
Initially, I thought it may be a hard drive problem. I have taken the hard drive out, plugged it into one of them usb adapters, and I am now able to access everything on my laptop. So, hard drive doesnt seem to be broken. This leads me to believe that it may be the motherboard which is broken, as I assume this is the most likely thing to break.

So, my silly question is, am I able to take the motherboard out of a spare laptop I have, and get it into the brokern laptop? Or are motherboards laptop dependent, meaning if I have a HP laptop, I need a HP motherboard?

Sorry, one more thing. Is there any way to isolate a hardward problem? If there is a need to buy a new motherboard, I dont really want to do this unless I am certain it is the motherboard which is broken.


Cheers

This post has been edited by nick2price: 10 September 2012 - 05:16 PM

[no2pencil]

nick2price, on 10 September 2012 - 08:15 PM, said:

am I able to take the motherboard out of a spare laptop I have, and get it into the brokern laptop? Or are motherboards laptop dependent, meaning if I have a HP laptop, I need a HP motherboard?

Not only do you need an HP motherboard, you need one that is specific to that model. It must physically fit into the bezel, the shell, & match up with the devices in that machine.

nick2price, on 10 September 2012 - 08:15 PM, said:

Is there any way to isolate a hardward problem? If there is a need to buy a new motherboard, I dont really want to do this unless I am certain it is the motherboard which is broken.

Without knowing what problems it's having, it's difficult to say. I'd try swapping the memory first.

If it is HP, I wouldn't hold much hope, as their laptops have had a heating problem ever since the dv9000 series, & often the Graphical Processor will burn out.