At other times the laptops begin to exhibit unusual issues such as unexpected shutdowns, screen flicker, unresponsive keyboard, battery, or strange noises. Sometimes it is hard to understand what, in particular, is wrong, particularly when several symptoms manifest simultaneously.
I want to know what the community thinks: when your laptop starts to show signs of malfunctioning, what are the first steps you take in order to find out what is wrong? Is there a way of isolating the problem to be one of hardware, software or environmental factors. Have you observed tendencies of some repairs working better or some issues being more difficult to find out than you thought?
The following discussion is intended to present observations, tips and tricks of troubleshooting and lessons learned associated with the real-life problems with laptops. It is not about prescribing any particular services or products, it is about knowing how to do things practically in order to solve the problems with the laptops in a safe way.