Laptop Trouble

[HandsomeDead]

Something to do with the charger is borked, it won't acknowledge the power supply when it's shoved in its hole.

The power supply is newish so it can't be that, and when I tried the old, worn one it just spat and sparked at me.

Can this be fixed?

[spatular]

do you have a voltmeter/multimeter to check the power supply is definitely working?

[Cyberpunk]

It sounds like the socket on your laptop is fucked. This is a common fault on laptops. It is possible to remove the socket, and solder in a new one, but I wouldn't reccomend it to a novice.

[HandsomeDead]

Cheers. I also had a friend look at it, we think it is an issue with the socket. I'm now on the hunt for my first tower.

Recommendations? And I want cheap, around £400. I really didn't need this.

[spatular]

if you don't want to play games on it, add an extra 1GB ram to this and it should be fine, can't vouch for the quality of it but it is cheap:

http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/extra-value-desktop-celeron-e3400-2/838441

[HandsomeDead]

Cheers, that is cheap but I already bought one yesterday. This one.

It comes with a moniter that I don't need but I reckon I can sell it on and make some money back. Plus, it looks decent enough to run the games I have well so that's good, too.

[Craymen Edge]

Cheers, that is cheap but I already bought one yesterday. This one.

It comes with a moniter that I don't need but I reckon I can sell it on and make some money back. Plus, it looks decent enough to run the games I have well so that's good, too.

Thank the gaming gods for this extended console generation, it means you can get a fairly good PC package with similar gaming performance for a few hundred quid these days.

Geforce 6 series is getting pretty long in the tooth now (2007), so might give you problems if you want to play anything new.

[DANGERMAN]

yeah my current card was only about £70-90 and matches what my consoles can do (with 3 gig ram though) so it's not insanely expensive to turn it into a gaming pc. Depends what you want though, if you're after Crysis at 1080p then you're going to need to spend money, Half Life 2 at 720p (or the monitor equivalent) and you're fine as you are. Get Torchlight though, it's awesome

[Sly Reflex]

Get Torchlight though, it's awesome

It would be just easier to put it in your sig than type it into practically every post you do.

[spatular]

Geforce 6 series is getting pretty long in the tooth now (2007), so might give you problems if you want to play anything new.

guessing from the shared memory it's built in to the motherboard too...

[HandsomeDead]

I don't think I'll be playing anything that new. I'll still have my consoles for that stuff but I'll be rummaging through steam and finding older PC games I missed, I have Deus Ex already and I'll be able to play it now. Probably see how the Source engine stuff runs aswell.

So yeah, I'm in no rush to update the graphics card.

And I'll look into Torchlight when it hits the sales again.

[spatular]

I have Deus Ex already and I'll be able to play it now.

good choice sir

[Uncle Dokuro]

My keyboard and screen is on the fritz. Screen keeps flickering and displaying lines at the top half of the screen. The keyboard esc, f1, f2, f3 and tab keys stopped working. Looking at a replacement and not sure what that will be as I still have to figure out a budget.

[spatular]

My parents laptop is on the blink. It turns on ok, half the time you see the bios splash screen, then the screen goes blank , half the time nothing at all. Light is on to say it's charging so don't think it's a power problem, and the screen backlight is on. Tried plugging in an external monitor - still nothing. You can hear its on and the power light etc are on so it's not turning off after the bios screen, just a blank screen.

going into the bios it's pretty locked down, all I could do was reset to default, which didn't help. Tried restore from the bios menu, does nothing. Boot up with a restore cd in the drive- similar blank screen.

Anyone got any ideas of things to try?

I've told them to get a caddy so as long as it's not the hdd that's broke, they should be able to get pictures off it at least.

[DANGERMAN]

It sounds like when my hdd went. The only plus is that once in a while I did manage to get on, but it doesn't sound good

[RoboticMonk3y]

Have a peep at booting linux of a usb thumbdrive

if you can boot into linux from USB it points to your hard drive being toast, if it doesn't, then it's something else gone pop :S

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/

[Jimboxy]

Have a peep at botting linux of a usb thumbdrive

if you can boot into linux from USB it points to your hard drive being toast, if it doesn't, then it's something else gone pop :S

Hood call, I'm going to try that with my knackered laptop as well.

[spatular]

cheers guys, i'll give that a try, hope it's not the hdd as the pics were the main thing they were bothered about. i don't expect booting from usb will work as booting from a cd didn't work..but worth a try

i seem to remember a trick about removing the bios battery to fix possible bios problems so probably try that too.

[Manicm]

Instead of starting a new thread thought would add this here. Whats wrong with my laptop, I just can't figure it out. The screen dips in and out of power save mode even when plugged into the mains. The brightness just dips to dull every few minutes then flips back really annoying. Ive searched for the power settings in windows 8 and changed them it occasionally stays ok. The other thing is the mouse pad every so often for no reason just flicks the cursor round the screen. I can be typing and then find ive put the wrong sentence into one of the above lines.

Really frustrating at times.

[Craymen Edge]

Sounds like poltergeists. Yep. Definitely haunted.

If changing power settings in Windows isn't fixing it, then it might be a problem with the physical connect between the screen and motherboard? Its probably worth having a repair place look at it.