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Laptop
Troubleshooting - Toshiba, Dell, HP, IBM and Sony Laptop
troubleshooting
The
first step in repairing any laptop or notebook is
troubleshooting the problem accurately.
For example, some
people will run out and buy a new battery on the assumption
it's failed when the problem is a frayed wire or a bad
connector on the power cord, something that can be fixed
with a little solder or electric tape. Likewise, a "dead"
LCD screen could be a main board or video adapter failure, a
bad inverter or a burnt out backlight. When the LCD itself
needs replacing, it will probably be due to a physical crack
in the glass or blocks of dead pixels. If your CD or DVD
drive won't work anymore, make sure you've tried a selection
of discs and try a cleaner kit before replacing the drive,
and always double-check the connection before discarding the
old drive. About the only problems that will identify
themselves as imminent failures are increasingly loud hard
drives or steadily decreasing battery life over time.
There's very little difference between troubleshooting a
Dell Latitude, Toshiba Satellite, Sony Vaio, IBM Thinkpad,
HP Pavilion (and Compaq) or even an Apple Powerbook or
iBook. The basic designs of all of these laptops are the
same, even if one model uses an Intel CPU, another an AMD,a
third a PowerPC and a fourth a low power Transmeta. A
technician troubleshooting Toshiba laptops may be more like
to start with the battery, as they are notoriously weak,
just as troubleshooting HP and Compaq notebooks often begins
with the RAM. However, it's a mistake to approach any
notebook problem with a preconceived notion of the outcome
rather than following a logical process of elimination. Just
because one model of Dell tends to blue blotches on the
screen when it ages doesn't mean that Dell kept
manufacturing notebooks with the same problem. IBM and Sony
and Apple laptops have generally been viewed as the higher
quality than the more popular brands, but they all suffer
similar failures due to overheating, wear and tear, and the
occasional run of bad components.
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