No good news here
by
robo_dev
·
about 14 years, 9 months ago
In reply to Compaq Presario V3000
Laptops do run hot, and heat causes things like hard-drives to have a shorter life in these units.
If the system has a cooling fan, is it running?
Systems can do strange things if they are overheating.
Connect an external monitor and try to replicate the ‘video scrambling issue’. If the external video is scrambled, then the video card is likely failing. On most laptops the video is part of the mobo, but others have a discrete video adapter, not sure about yours. Also try this test both on battery and AC power, just in case the problem is due to a faulty AC adapter.
If the video is scrambled on external display, and yours is not a discrete video adapter, then your motherboard is most likely bad.
If the video is fine on the external, then the display hardware is faulty, and swapping the display assembly might fix it. It could be a loose/faulty connection between the display and the motherboard, if this were the case you could probably cause it to fail by jiggling the display hinge.
The ‘freezing at Windows startup’ could be many things, from bad memory, to a Windows software problem, to a failing or overheating hard drive.
To troubleshoot that problem, try starting Windows in safe mode and/or interactive mode…this may help to pinpoint exactly what module/driver is getting stuck. It may be helpful to unplug/disconnect all non-essential devices in case a failing CD-Drive or flaky USB device is the culprit.
Also, does it boot more successfully when cold or hot? This would point back to an overheating issue.
As a general health check, download and run a CD-ROM based ‘live’ Linux CD such as Ubuntu. If the PC can run Linux normally in all cases, then it’s a Windows problem most likely.