Zoandar

From what I have read over the past couple hours, apparently HP created a really lousy notebook line in the Pavilion DV1000 series. Dozens of other poor folks are suffering exactly what happened to me. One day the seemingly fine notebook just switched itself off in mid-sentence while typing an email. Now it is totally stone dead, battery or TWO different power bricks. No lights. Nothing.

I have the motherboard out, and am trying to trace things down with the help of an incredibly wise and good friend who is a retired Bell Labs electronics circuitry design engineer. If anyone can figure it out, he can. But he is a couple thousand miles distant, in Phoenix, AZ and I am in Ohio.

If anyone can contribute ANY information regarding which component or components might have failed, please post that info. If we figure it out, I'll post the results on here. So far I haven't found anything that looks loose or broken, or poorly connected. So I will probably have to apply power to the board and trace it with my scope.

My friend is sort of mentoring me at the hobby level of electronics, so I am limited in my knowledge. But I figure I have nothing to lose here, since otherwise it is a paperweight. I can salvage the HD with an external USB enclosure if need be, but I would rather fix the notebook if I can.

Thanks!

vendohondabiz

Hi! my name es john of argentina.
I have a similar problem. The compaq laptop dead, only can start them remove the battery and hold on -without power- 30seconds and then connecting power and batterry. All good, the laptop is power on but the problem maybe continue. If you get a better solution please send news. A hug. John. vendohondabiz@gmail.com

Zoandar

Hi John! I hope all is well there in Argentina! I am in the US.

Sorry to say that I still have not fixed the problem. The HP DV1000 model line was apparently well known to have this issue, because I can find hundreds of similar complaints when I search Google for this problem.

I hope to work on the notebook some more this winter. It is very frustrating, and so when I get tired of trying with no success I set it aside for a while.

My friend who is helping me by email has a combination of 50 years experience with Bell Labs here in the US and is a retired electronics design engineer. He has probably forgotten more than I can ever hope to learn! :-) But he believes what is probably wrong is that some tiny connection on the notebook motherboard is cracked, and so it sometimes connects and sometimes not. I can say that every time I got it working, and it would suddenly die again, I was actively typing on it when it would die. So that suggests some sort of physical movement is opening up the connection.

Unfortunately, HP is ignoring this entire line of lemons, and refuses to do anything about them. I won't buy any more HP products because of it. The very least they could do is offer a discount on a new one.

I know it has been a long time since my last post, and I am sure it will be a lot more time before I might find any kind of solution, but I will try to remember to come back here and write about it if I do find a way to fix it. Good luck with yours! Hope you have a Merry Christmas!

Zoandar

TriggerFinger

Does it even power ON still? If so, can you at least go into BIOS?