M17x 8 Beeps No post

Question

A friend of mine owns an M17x that he has had about a year. He says that his kid closed the lid fairly rough and all of a sudden on startup you hear 8 beeps, followed by a pause, followed by 8 beeps. After doing some reading online, I found that this is likely a GPU, or LCD issue. When turning the laptop on, while it was beeping, the screen would turn completely white, but didn't appear to be cracked or broken, just completely white.

He called tech support who said his warranty ended less than 3 weeks ago, and he would need to pay over $200 for them to look at it. Being a computer guy, I figured I should take the keyboard off and make sure the LCD didn't simply become unplugged. I took off the 2 screws for the bottom case, then took out the screws labeled I, and P, as well as the 5 keyboard screws. I unplugged the connector labeled 2, so as to remove the bezel, and traced connector labeled 1 back to the lcd.. I unplugged this and plugged it back in hoping it may help.

After plugging the 2 connectors back in, and the 2 keyboard connectors, and putting the battery in, I tried to turn on the computer. I am still receiving the 8 beeps, but now the screen won't even turn white. The screen stays off, it's continuously beeping 8 times, then pausing. The 3 Caps lock, num lock lights are not doing anything. Why would the screen not turn on at all now, and does anyone have any suggestions? It's an expensive laptop to break so easily.

Tesla1856 · Accepted Answer

The laptop was taken to a local repair company who confirmed that the graphics card has gone out.

What confused me is, they said that the reason the monitor is not coming on is because it was incorrectly plugged in.

Well, first ... call an external monitor a "monitor". You call the built-in LCD "the LCD Panel". It gets confusing otherwise. There is also a "LCD Panel - High Voltage Power Inverter circuit" that supplies power to the LCD Panel (they go out sometimes).

I know you are just trying to help your friend, and I don't mean to say anything bad about the repair shop (because I'm sure they are just trying to help also) however ...

Unless they or you actually saw the m17x laptop's LCD Panel work on another laptop, or another LCD Panel work on this m17x whole machine ... you still don't know 100% what exactly is wrong with it. If they did that great, but my guess is that they just hooked up an external monitor. When it didn't work, they hypothesized it must be the video card.

The best way to get a laptop fixed it to do it yourself (totally) or take it to a qualified shop and let them fix it completely. This is the only way for the costs, responsibility, and warranty to fall on the proper party.

Tesla1856 · Answer

Since 8 beeps does appear to be LCD failure (and not video card failure), try an external screen. There might be a hot-key-combo required to switch it over.

http://www.dell.com/support/troubleshooting/us/en/19/KCS/KcsArticles/ArticleView?docid=496582

Tesla1856 · Answer

Pull battery and re-seat everything (including video card).

If it still doesn't work, it's likely something blown or cracked. Start testing for voltages or swapping parts with known good laptop and see where problems follow or what tests good.

https://www.google.com/search?q=troubleshoot+dead+laptop&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-Address&ie=&oe=

Tr33x0rs · Answer

Tesla,

Unfortunately I do not have spare parts for this laptop, so I am unable to swap out any parts on it. When you say to reseat the video card, do you by chance have a picture of the video card to motherboard connection? I'm not 100% sure where it connects, and don't want to just starting taking the entire laptop apart.

I have also tried to connect the laptop with a VGA cable and hitting FN + F6, which i believe should switch the display, although it still does the 8 beeps.

Tesla1856 · Answer

Actually, I said re-seat everything. &#xa0;&#xa0; Since you have no spare parts, a bad connection is your only hope anyway. Download PDF Service Manual for location of parts and procedures. Read all those links (some are pretty good). It can stay together and broken ... or taken apart to fix it.

Tr33x0rs · Answer

Tesla,

Thanks for your help. I unfortunately was not able to repair the laptop. I reseated everything as you said, with no luck. Due to the fact that I had no parts to test, I had no way to know which part had gone bad. The laptop was taken to a local repair company who confirmed that the graphics card has gone out.

What confused me is, they said that the reason the monitor is not coming on is because it was incorrectly plugged in. The picture above shows exactly what I unplugged for the LCD. I'm 100% certain that I plugged it back in completely, I'm unsure how it would have been plugged in incorrectly. It's not like you can plug it in upside down. Do you know if this cord goes to the back of the LCD as well, and is able to be unplugged from that end? Just trying to make sense of what I was told, as I'm certain that #1 (shown in picture above) was plugged in correctly.

Anyway, my friend plans on purchasing a new GPU off ebay, and we should be back in business, thanks for the help, just wanted to update you.

Tr33x0rs · Answer

Tesla,

My mistake in not being clear. They said the reason that the LCD is no longer showing white (as it did before I reseated everything) is because it was not properly plugged in, which confuses me.

I also understand about the repair shop. I'm an A+ certified tech, so I definitely understand troubleshooting, as well as computer repair. I wasn't sure how they would verify 100% that something was bad, except for with replacement parts, or possibly with a multimeter (although I wasn't sure this was even possible).

I did also try to plug in an external display with no luck, leading me to believe it was the GPU, although I won't know for sure until I replace it and see.

I don't see any sense to have the repair shop replace the GPU, as it's easily done, and would be outrageous for them to replace it. They're wanting $110 just in labor to replace the GPU, where as I can do the labor for free in under 20 minutes.

Anyway, thanks for your help, I appreiciate you taking the time out of your day to help a fellow tech! Hopefully the repair shop was right! I'll keep you updated!

himg4digu · Answer

I had the same problem, but i plugged the connector number one into the slot on just right side of number 1. Laptop works fine for me now.

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M17x 8 Beeps No post

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