HP dv6-2004eo Boots ONLY half the time?

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resvens

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Aug 4, 2015
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Hey,

My problem is this laptop booting half the time with no problem into windows7 and everything working fine, Howere half the time i boot it goes nowhere these are symptoms i get

- Fan running and no post sounds or any beeping
- Completely black screen
- Yellow sound / Mute light on panel, also wifi light stays yellow.
- DVD player is still working
- Wont respond with beeping sounds EVEN if i take RAM out

It responds normally if i take ram out WHEN its booting fine ( half the time ) with beep sounds as it should. But when its in this error mode it wont respond to anything.

Took laptop apart and look any bad connections, replaced thermal paste etc, looked for shorts. Nothing, no liquid dmg at all.

Started it connected to to external monitor even without cmos battery and couldnt get signal half the time.. with ONLY motherboard nothing other connected than cpu.

It wont give any signal to external monitor when in *error mode*
Checked power adapter and cable, gives good voltages.
Tried without battery ofc and hard reset and nothing.

Tried update to latest bios, and bios downgrade and nothing works.
Could this be sign of dying GPU? It wont give tho any info about that when its working, in normal state. Also why it wouldnt even detect ram on error mode.. what has that to do with gpu?
thx if any expert can help


 
I am working on a similar HP laptop with a similar booting problem. So far: it will only boot normally every time, when the wireless nic is removed, otherwise it is pretty much as you described.
 
It makes no sense, it doesnt matter if laptop is *heated up* or not. It will boot normally for 50% of time or bit less. Booting up when laptop in different positions doesnt matter also, moving monitor up and down... nothing.
When i disassemblied it, and without anything added only motherboard and cpu.. same thing so cant be wireless for me, no even beeping sound for missing ram. Maybe someting is shorted and cant see what.. atleast it cant be bigger than 5v rail otheriwse it wouldnt boot at all.

Anyone has schematics / boardview for dv6 hp laptop mobos ?
I have shitload of same socket cpu:s could try replace one if its that, also if i downgrade and reflash bios and it works well.. could still some part of bios be corrupted ?
 
Couple things could be going on here:

- bad capacitor on the motherboard - look for signs of burnt/leaking caps.
- wifi card is not on the BIOS whitelist of HP-approved parts or BIOS whitelist is corrupt/too old.
- Battery issues (test by powering on with adapter and no battery in)
- CPU could be dying.
 
For me atleast wifi cant be the issue cause its having problem even without it connected.
. Or vga port was busted when i try with external monitor. Will check if that was issue also and it could still be wifi.

Battery in or out, loaded to 100% or down to 25% no difference.

I inspected motherboard pretty closely for burned caps.. few was SLIGHTLY brown. But on working mobos ive seen those aswell.. IF its bad does it look horrible?.. or can even slight colour change mean its busted?

I have same socket CPU.. can test it later if it works. Atleast slot pins looked good, will update later on this
 
resvens said:
For me atleast wifi cant be the issue cause its having problem even without it connected.
. Or vga port was busted when i try with external monitor. Will check if that was issue also and it could still be wifi.

Battery in or out, loaded to 100% or down to 25% no difference.

I inspected motherboard pretty closely for burned caps.. few was SLIGHTLY brown. But on working mobos ive seen those aswell.. IF its bad does it look horrible?.. or can even slight colour change mean its busted?

I have same socket CPU.. can test it later if it works. Atleast slot pins looked good, will update later on this
Click to expand...

One option that I forgot to mention was bad memory - I would try swapping the memory sticks out and/or putting them in one-by-one in all available slots to eliminate the possibility of a dead slot.

Even slightly brown caps can be a bad sign. Use a magnifying glass and look for leakage and/or bent/bulging cap tops.
 
resvens said:
For me atleast wifi cant be the issue cause its having problem even without it connected.
. Or vga port was busted when i try with external monitor. Will check if that was issue also and it could still be wifi.

Battery in or out, loaded to 100% or down to 25% no difference.

I inspected motherboard pretty closely for burned caps.. few was SLIGHTLY brown. But on working mobos ive seen those aswell.. IF its bad does it look horrible?.. or can even slight colour change mean its busted?

I have same socket CPU.. can test it later if it works. Atleast slot pins looked good, will update later on this
Click to expand...

The wifi issue is not a problem to be fixed, it is just a common symptom exhibited by these HP laptops when there is GPU solder joint failure or GPU failure.

Don't worry about the SMD capacitor discoloration, probably fine, failure mode is cracking (in the tan part) or separated at the ends.

Last resort you can re-flow the GPU solder. I use a heat gun but it is very easy to screw up that way (years of practice and I still fail sometimes). when it works its great, when it doesn't its a lot of work to clean everything and reinstall the GPU.

So try everything else first. Good luck.
 
Yes i have tried to fix some boards with heatgun method, both failed so hard even little components flew off motherboard :=) rest was fucked with burned flux.

I was using infrared thermometer at 200-250c and clearly it was very bad idea. If i warm it to alot less.. maybe 150c would that resurrect failing gpu? ofc it wouldnt melt solder below gpu it but could test if gpu is the problem first. dont want to destroy another board which still could work

Although those HP laptops which had gpu usually posted and didnt give beeps.. or no post without beeps. Also there was capslock / numlock blink code when i booted.
This one is really odd, no blink code and cant even recodnize missing ram when on error mode.
 
Last edited:
- wifi card is not on the BIOS whitelist of HP-approved parts or BIOS whitelist is corrupt/too old.
Click to expand...

Ran into this issue recently. The HP laptop's BIOS literally had a whitelist of approved wireless Vendor/Hardware ID's, and if you put in something else the laptop would refuse to boot. It was the dumbest shit ever.
 
PornoSatan said:
Ran into this issue recently. The HP laptop's BIOS literally had a whitelist of approved wireless Vendor/Hardware ID's, and if you put in something else the laptop would refuse to boot. It was the dumbest shit ever.
Click to expand...

Yup. Moral of the story - if you buy an HP machine of any sort (they do this kind of dumb shit with their workstations too), buy it for what it has in it now and don't assume you'll be able to upgrade ANYTHING in it; they lock their shit down so hard.
 
Atleast cant be dying cpu for me, tried with another and same shit. Seems like every problem hp has relates to gpu... no matter what code it beeps or blinks :D

I heard about EXP GDC external gpu.. can use same port where wifi card goes, could i test dead laptop gpu:s with this?
http://www.banggood.com/EXP-GDC-Laptop-External-PCI-E-Graphics-Card-p-934367.html
although need some way to boot from this gpu, most hp laptops have so dead gpu:s that cant get past black screen.
 
AFAIK if you manage to connect a GPU to the wifi port you will be connecting over a PCI-E 1x connection; the PC should boot and use that graphics card automatically for output, just as though you had put it into a normal PCI-E 1x port on a desktop.

This is a very expensive way of testing the GPU error if you don't have a compatible GPU, however. I would think a better way of doing this might be to connect the computer to a LAN, allow it to boot into a live Linux environment automatically off a USB stick and/or CD, and then from there get on another computer on the same network and ping it to see if you can get a response. A ping response would indicate that the laptop has correctly booted into the linux environment and connected to the network, and that the only problem with the system is something on the graphics/display side.
 
I have few working radeon 5850 hd and also 450w pretty shit power supply which i could test with.. only need to buy exp gdc. Havent yet checked psu / gpu compatibility issues though. could try this lan method on few other HP laptops with blinking issues.

I have few ubuntu live cds lying around.. but dunno if it boots straight to desktop with it.
Do i need to manually make it boot automatically ? Or is there image. file for that somwhere?
thx
 
resvens said:
I have few working radeon 5850 hd and also 450w pretty shit power supply which i could test with.. only need to buy exp gdc. Havent yet checked psu / gpu compatibility issues though. could try this lan method on few other HP laptops with blinking issues.

I have few ubuntu live cds lying around.. but dunno if it boots straight to desktop with it.
Do i need to manually make it boot automatically ? Or is there image. file for that somwhere?
thx
Click to expand...


DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CONNECT THE 5850 to the PSU and then to the laptop. You need a card like a PCI-E 1x 5450 to do this properly - the GPU needs to be powered on by the system - doing it any other way requires an elaborate and frankly (to my eyes) dangerous setup.

The Ubuntu liveCD should work. Pop it in, hopefully your BIOS was set to boot from DVD drive first. Wait about five minutes just to be sure, then hit enter one time (to select the first option in the GRUB menu, which will be the liveCD. Wait another five minutes to be sure it boots and gets connected to the LAN. Then discover it on your network however you want (I would use my router's page to see who's been given an IP address or else do nmap on a linux box), and then ping the laptop to see if it's responding.
 
TheEschaton said:
DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CONNECT THE 5850 to the PSU and then to the laptop. You need a card like a PCI-E 1x 5450 to do this properly - the GPU needs to be powered on by the system - doing it any other way requires an elaborate and frankly (to my eyes) dangerous setup.

The Ubuntu liveCD should work. Pop it in, hopefully your BIOS was set to boot from DVD drive first. Wait about five minutes just to be sure, then hit enter one time (to select the first option in the GRUB menu, which will be the liveCD. Wait another five minutes to be sure it boots and gets connected to the LAN. Then discover it on your network however you want (I would use my router's page to see who's been given an IP address or else do nmap on a linux box), and then ping the laptop to see if it's responding.
Click to expand...

Something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...T_wyy4Te4ljubxVHp_VLIRoCYXvw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
 
hmm so i dont need external PSU at all with this one, interesting.
I need some kind of cable to get it in pci-e slot 1x slot, no way to plug it in. so with this i dont need exp gdc at all?.. just cable and this gpu = system powers it automatically?
thx
 
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