HP dv9000 Won't Boot

[Kubie]

A friend dropped off his HP dv9000 laptop and it is running Vista Home Premium.

The battery and A/C adapter seem to work fine so I don't believe power is the issue.

When you turn it on, the button lights light up and you can hear the fans start up. That lasts for about 2 seconds they go off and then it recycles like that over and over. There are no lights or images on the LCD screen.
I can tap the escape key when the lights and fans are working and you can hear the DVD drive make noise like it is reading a disk and once I do that, the fans stop but the lights stay on and nothing happens after that.
I removed the HDD and checked it for bad sectors, failure, and virii. The HDD checks out fine and I removed a couple of nasty trojans.
Nothing ever flashes on the LCD screen. No logo, lights or anything. I can't therefore get into the bios or attempt a recovery.
Does anyone have any ideas about this problem?

TIA

Carl

[Force Flow]

RAM issue?

[Kubie]

Hi Force Flow.
Could be a ram issue but how can I check that since I can't get the darn thing to boot.
I may see if it has the same ram as my Acer and go from there.

Thanks

Carl

[Force Flow]

If it has more than one stick, pull one and leave the other.

Does pulling the battery and attempting a boot help?

Another test you can try is if you remove the RAM you should get a beep code. If there's no beep code, I might start to suspect a faulty motherboard.

[Kubie]

Originally Posted by Force Flow If it has more than one stick, pull one and leave the other. Does pulling the battery and attempting a boot help? Another test you can try is if you remove the RAM you should get a beep code. If there's no beep code, I might start to suspect a faulty motherboard.

Checked memory one stick at a time.
No change with battery installed or not installed.
There are no beep codes with or without memory installed. I installed the memory from my Acer and no change. You'll notice I quoted the part about suspecting the motherboard and I am leaning that way at this time.

Thanks Force Flow

Carl

[jmr30183]

Just out of curiosity, is it an AMD or Intel system? And if Intel, does it have an NVIDIA graphics chip?

I went thru this same thing with a dv9339us that was only 15 months old...decided to scrap it rather than buy a new motherboard. And it'll be my last HP ever...mine was an Intel-based system with an NVIDIA GeForce 7600 graphics card.

[Iamjosh]

Sorry to tell you, but if thats an nVidia chipset you've got a lemon. I've got 3 friends with a Compaq/HP/Gateway all with that same problem.

nVidia released the 8 and 9 series GPU/chipsets and they fail like crazy and there isn't anything you can do about it other than send it in to be replaced.

For some lucky owners HP did make free repair for out of warranty units. Check Matt's blog.