HP DV4 1225DX laptop worth fixing?

[MaxRat]

Okay so this friend of mine bought this laptop new a few years back.... before 1 year was up the hard drive died from over heating. I told him when he got it new that he needed a Chill-pad... after the Hard Drive failed

About 6 months ago he said smoke came out of the Left top speaker and then the screen quit working. He took it into a a PC place who then told him the screen went out. They replaced the screen and it still didnt work. Chalking it off to a defective screen they replaced it again and it still doesnt work.

The other day he brought it over to me and he's right it doesnt work. Upon boot it has a light orange dot about the size of a pencil earaser with a glow around it. Shortly after that the screen turns all white... that tells me the screen is fine.

I plugged my sons 19in TV into the laptop via HDMI and I got greeted to a desktop background via an extended screen. After a quick google I learned the Function + F4 key would switch monitors so I was able to make the TV the main screen and access the laptop as normal...

Now my question is this... the thing runs fine with no issue other than the laptop screen not working... after a few hours of Googling I find its a very common issue with that the graphics adapter overheats and quits..

Looking it doesnt appear that this board accepts a card and after tearing into it it doesnt look like one would fit even if it did. Not having any experience tearing into laptops is it worth finding a board and replacing it and do any of you in the know how think its board related too? and where would I source a board from a reputable place? I found them for 139.00 - 300.00

The bud wouldnt mind sinking 150.00 into it to get it working but it does need a good cleaning as he is a smoker and it does have a good deal of gunk in the fan and I am sure I could clean it at this point I had it torn down to the board and there is a film haze on it.

just curious where I should go from here with it?

I did notice this thing has plenty of viruses to... connected to the internet and the CPU fan went to full tilt and CPU to 100% and it became a slug... this kid never learns.... ha ha

[glc]

Junk it.

[strollin]

To expand a little on GLC's advice, the guy could put that $150 toward a new computer and get (hopefully) a new, problem free laptop with a warranty. If you replace the motherboard, he will have the same laptop with it's propensity to fail for some other reason. Also, what about your time to remove/replace the board and your time to remove the viruses? If you do it for free, it is a good chunk of time for you to invest into it. If you charge him for your time, then that is $$ that could he could put toward a new computer.

I saw several listings on ebay of that model laptop going for $250-$300 for a working unit.

There's nothing really special about that laptop that makes it worth trying to fix. It's a dual core AMD Turion with a 250G HDD.

[glc]

HP DV series laptops are crap to begin with - cut your losses.

[allfiredup]

Originally Posted by glc HP DV series laptops are crap to begin with - cut your losses.

HP consumer laptops look great and provide a nice user experience for a while, but they literally self-destruct shortly after the 1-year warranty expires.

Take it from a sucker who bought a dv9000-series back in 2007 for $1600+!!! It started overheating around the 14-month mark and fried the hard drive...then the Nvidia chip failed at 16-months and it was toast! I sent it back to Hell where it came from!!!

Actually, I sold it as-is on Ebay for $185. You could do the same with your dv4 and probably get $75 or so....beats tossing it in the recylcling bin!

For a replacement, I would recommend looking at low-end ASUS or Lenovo 'Essential' series laptop. Both can be had for $500 or less and they're impressive for the price.