Compaq Laptop motherboard - Tech Support Forums

JimG · September 16th, 2002, 01:46 AM

Hey all,

Need some help regarding a Compaq Armada E500 laptop. My friend's laptop no longer boots, despite every attempt in the book and then some. She brought it to the Service Center here at school. They said the motherboard's fried, but because they saw this one chunck of plastic missing on the bottom of the laptop, they're saying she dropped it (not true). If they do fix it, they'll charge her $600 for the board. So since they won't fix it under warranty for this problem or any other (she's only had it 2 years, and the warranty is 3), I was thinking there's got to be a way to replace the board myself.
It's a Pentium 3, 600 MHz. I started looking around for the part, but the possibilities are pretty slim.
Ok, if you're still reading this post, here's the question:
Does anyone know a good laptop parts site that would have motherboards, and specifically ones for Compaq Armada E500s?? Also, I would prefer that the board NOT have a CPU, but beggers can't be choosers.

PresterJohn · September 16th, 2002, 01:54 AM

>They said the motherboard's fried, but because they saw this one chunck of plastic missing on the bottom of the laptop

gawd, what a bunch of sc**bags!

if they say the mobo is fried and not related to the damaged case, just fix it already. have you tried speaking w/compaq directly. if it's still under warranty, maybe you'll have better luck with them than the ones at school.

laptop parts (aside from standardized stuff like ram, hd) usually have to be ordered from authorized parts distributor of the manufacturer which typically means that it is not available to the general public and are quite expensive to boot.

bigblue77 · September 16th, 2002, 01:56 AM

I know you are probably going to cringe at my advise, but I am going to give it anyway.

I buy almost all the parts for laptops I need from eBay. I look for a reputible seller that has one for sale with a different problem than the one I am woking on. Then I strip the eBay one for the parts I need. Granted for small parts i don't usually buy a complete lappie, but for a good mobo I do.

I also look for lots of 3 or more lappies that all need repair and make one or two good ones and then sell them. Granted it might take more labor per $, but its still $$$.

Jer

JimG · September 16th, 2002, 02:04 AM

Quote:

if they say the mobo is fried and not related to the damaged case, just fix it already

yeah, that was my thought too. Problem is there's a lot of people here who have done really stupid things with their laptops, so I understand why they're a little hesitant. However, there's no way even dropping the laptop would have done this. And the best part is the chunck of plastic is in the edge of the left side. There's about 501 ways it could have broken. I did find one mobo, problem is it's $895, and I can buy it if I were so inclined.

bigblue77,
Neat idea. Didn't think about it. I don't cringe at eBay. Wanted to order a set of lights for my truck, but they guy wouldn't let me bid because I had no references (but I'm a new member).

JimG · September 17th, 2002, 09:04 PM

Well, great news after all. Apparently after the tech guy spoke with his supervisor (the head of the IT dept or something), he replaced it. There was no clear proof for him to show the boss that dropping the laptop would result in such a problem. So, that's cool, my friend saved $600.
Unfortunately, the guy threw a Win2k image on there, and this thing's running with 64 MBs of RAM. Got the services.exe file down to 1.5 MBs, but it's still slower than a snail. Gonna upgrade the RAM next. Also, he never asked her about backing up files ... good thing I did that first (those little laptop-to-IDE adapters are handy).

PresterJohn · September 17th, 2002, 09:12 PM

glad to hear that!

prolly should upgrade the ram anyway (whether you stay w/w2k or go back to win9x. 64mb is not much nowadays, esp with ram prices being so cheap.

if you can get another 64mb or so, i'd leave the w2k on there.

JimG · September 18th, 2002, 02:03 AM

Yeah, I'm getting another 64 MBs for it, so it'll have 128 MBs by the weekend. Had to ask though, since it's not my money (if it was the laptop would have 256 MBs ... or better yet, be a Dell).

Currently I'm working on updating all the programs and stripping out the unnecessary stuff. Tweaked the services so it's at about 1 MB. It sorta runs, but not really.

I'm just happy she didn't have to pay the $600. Just as a sidenote, anyone who's familiar with the dongles 3Com PCMCIA cards use ... Stevens was charging $30 for replacements ... they were $6 on 3Com's site last time I looked.