Armada 7800 wont boot

Hello,

I am having a problem with an Armada 7800. When I apply power the
three LED's on the top come on ('A','arrow down',and '1'). The
speakers make a slight 'turn on noise'. Nothing else happens, no HDD
spinning, no display flicker, no POST beeps. When notebook power is
off the battery charging light DOES illuminate.

I already took it apart and removed the CMOS battery and the AUX
battery, as was suggested in the HP support forum, but to no avail.

Is the power supply bad? I did check the rectangular 5A fuse and it
was good.

Does this sound like a common problem, and if so, is it worth
repairing? Any suggestions are welcome please.

TIA,




-Graham

Remove the 'snails' from my email

G. Morgan wrote in news:4194be80.141131716
@graham.com:

Hello,

I am having a problem with an Armada 7800. When I apply power the
three LED's on the top come on ('A','arrow down',and '1'). The
speakers make a slight 'turn on noise'. Nothing else happens, no HDD
spinning, no display flicker, no POST beeps. When notebook power is
off the battery charging light DOES illuminate.

I already took it apart and removed the CMOS battery and the AUX
battery, as was suggested in the HP support forum, but to no avail.

Is the power supply bad? I did check the rectangular 5A fuse and it
was good.

Does this sound like a common problem, and if so, is it worth
repairing? Any suggestions are welcome please.

TIA,




-Graham

Remove the 'snails' from my email

My mother in law has a Compaq laptop too. (I don't know the model, it has a
166MHz MediaGX processor) and she ones had the same problem. I reseated the
expansion memory (contactable through a shutter in the bottom), and it
worked again.

I am having a problem with an Armada 7800. When I apply power the
three LED's on the top come on ('A','arrow down',and '1'). The
speakers make a slight 'turn on noise'. Nothing else happens, no HDD
spinning, no display flicker, no POST beeps. When notebook power is
off the battery charging light DOES illuminate.

Does indeed sound like memory, or possibly a powerboard (may not be a
separate PCB though!). See my above posting on the dead Acer for some more
general help.

Darrn

On 10 Oct 2004 11:36:27 GMT "Ingeborg"
used 33 lines of text to write in newsgroup: uk.comp.sys.laptops


My mother in law has a Compaq laptop too. (I don't know the model, it has a
166MHz MediaGX processor) and she ones had the same problem. I reseated the
expansion memory (contactable through a shutter in the bottom), and it
worked again.


I tried that, no go. :-(


Thanks anyway.


-Graham

Remove the 'snails' from my email

On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 15:25:50 GMT "Darren Jarvis"
used 13 lines of text to write in newsgroup: uk.comp.sys.laptops

Does indeed sound like memory, or possibly a powerboard (may not be a
separate PCB though!). See my above posting on the dead Acer for some more
general help.


If it was memory wouldn't I get a POST error code? I'm getting no
beeps at all. I took out the expansion memory, all that's left is the
32M on board. I've seen a mobo on Ebay for about ~$50 I might try
that, but I hate to buy something that won't fix the problem for sure.



-Graham

Remove the 'snails' from my email

If it was memory wouldn't I get a POST error code? I'm getting no
beeps at all. I took out the expansion memory, all that's left is the
32M on board. I've seen a mobo on Ebay for about ~$50 I might try
that, but I hate to buy something that won't fix the problem for sure.

Not always and not usually on the ones I've seen (depends on how the onboard
sound handles the PC beeper which is all the BIOS can manage). Have you
tried cleaning the processor pins yet? The P4 machines I've worked on have
been very problematic with bad connections on the socket and have sometimes
needed several doses of contact cleaner (isopropyl alcohol may work as a
substitute) and some gentle scrubbing with a nylon brush to make them go.

Darren

On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 22:36:15 GMT "Darren Jarvis"
used 16 lines of text to write in newsgroup: comp.sys.laptops

Not always and not usually on the ones I've seen (depends on how the onboard
sound handles the PC beeper which is all the BIOS can manage). Have you
tried cleaning the processor pins yet?

No, I did take the processor out and reseat it. I don't have any
contact cleaner at the moment.

I got this response from HP forums:


"the first thing to try would be a BIOS-reset. No guarantee but it
often does the job.
If some wrong information got into the BIOS' ESCD (extended system
configuration data) it may be cleard as follows:

1.) Easy way: Fn+11
- hold the Fn-key pressed,
- switch on power,
- continously tap on F11
This will lead to the flashing LEDs, cycling on and off.

Letting loose F11, the machine will boot again and show the BIOS
error-msg "162 system options not set". Use F1 to save the setting.

Caveat: All settings are set back to factory standard. You'll have to
enter a correct date/time.

2.) If the Fn+F11 trick won't help, follow the procedure explainded
under 2.2 of the attached excerpt from the MSG.
Pls note:
a) The time of 5 minutes specified in the recipe is too short. Give it
half an hour or so.
b) Pls strictly keep to the sequence. Recinnecting power too early
will spoli the process."

I have tried that and still nothing. It sure was a pain in the ass
taking this thing apart! I am out of ideas.




-Graham

Remove the 'snails' from my email

Hi Graham,

You're removed the CMOS battery. I suggest you put in a new one.
Some laptops won't start with a dead or no internal battery.

Guy
In article , G. Morgan
wrote:

=== re posting question ===

Update:

This thing still won't boot. I had the CMOS battery and the AUX
battery out for a week now. It's not the display either, I tried
hooking it to a monitor.

Any ideas?

I am having a problem with an Armada 7800. When I apply power the
three LED's on the top come on ('A','arrow down',and '1'). The
speakers make a slight 'turn on noise'. Nothing else happens, no HDD
spinning, no display flicker, no POST beeps. When notebook power is
off the battery charging light DOES illuminate.

I already took it apart and removed the CMOS battery and the AUX
battery, as was suggested in the HP support forum, but to no avail.

Is the power supply bad? I did check the rectangular 5A fuse and it
was good.

Does this sound like a common problem, and if so, is it worth
repairing? Any suggestions are welcome please.


-Graham

Remove the 'snails' from my email

Graham I have the same problem with the same model Armada (see Oct 30,
2004 posting in comp.sys.laptops from Ken). I've tried the steps in
the MSG, using fn+F11, pulling the CMOS battery and disconnecting the
Aux battery. None worked because most of those solutions involve
resetting a CMOS password that is prompted for, and that is also
unknown by the user. I never get the prompt, just a blank screen as
you have described What I did find is that after an undetermined
period of time ( i.e 1 Month & less than 5 months) with NO power on
the MB (i.e Main Battery pulled), I was able to boot to the command
prompt with a win98SE startup floppy disk. I ran scandisk on the HD
and found that the HD has 7 meg in bad files. After being idle again,
it started showing the original problem. I'm outta ideas as well,
except i haven't tried replacing the cMOS battery as stated in message
8 from NoOne. If so, maybe it takes time after a long "power down"
and subsequent "power up" for the system to acknowledge that the cMOS
battery is dead or dying and won't let the Armada run without a change
out. That's what I'm trying next.
If you find a definite answer, please post it on comp.sys.laptops,
I'll be watching....and I'll do the same. I have an important project
on mine and I do not want to do it over and there is a good chance
that the data isn't damaged.

Top Spin Ken (from Tennis)



G. Morgan wrote in message ...
On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 22:36:15 GMT "Darren Jarvis"
used 16 lines of text to write in newsgroup: comp.sys.laptops

Not always and not usually on the ones I've seen (depends on how the onboard
sound handles the PC beeper which is all the BIOS can manage). Have you
tried cleaning the processor pins yet?

No, I did take the processor out and reseat it. I don't have any
contact cleaner at the moment.

I got this response from HP forums:


"the first thing to try would be a BIOS-reset. No guarantee but it
often does the job.
If some wrong information got into the BIOS' ESCD (extended system
configuration data) it may be cleard as follows:

1.) Easy way: Fn+11
- hold the Fn-key pressed,
- switch on power,
- continously tap on F11
This will lead to the flashing LEDs, cycling on and off.

Letting loose F11, the machine will boot again and show the BIOS
error-msg "162 system options not set". Use F1 to save the setting.

Caveat: All settings are set back to factory standard. You'll have to
enter a correct date/time.

2.) If the Fn+F11 trick won't help, follow the procedure explainded
under 2.2 of the attached excerpt from the MSG.
Pls note:
a) The time of 5 minutes specified in the recipe is too short. Give it
half an hour or so.
b) Pls strictly keep to the sequence. Recinnecting power too early
will spoli the process."

I have tried that and still nothing. It sure was a pain in the ass
taking this thing apart! I am out of ideas.




-Graham

Remove the 'snails' from my email