tzw
05-22-2006, 03:21 PM
I have a Gateway 450SX4 laptop that will often not power on until I have tried repeatedly, sometimes for days. (I just keep trying every time I walk by it and every now and then I get lucky.) It also blanks out at random times as if it were going into standby mode, even when in use. A few times the monitor has gone dim, so I could just barely read it but it was still active. When this happens I have to power it off and back on again to get the monitor back, and sometimes the power comes back on right away and sometimes it doesn't.
At one point I changed all power settings so that it should never automatically go into standby and left it powered on, plugged into AC, to see if it would still go off - and eventually it did.
The light on the front shows that it is getting AC power and that the battery is charged, but the lights for hard drive, etc that usually come on at power up do not come on.
History, in case it's related: it had been having maybe the beginnings of this problem when I found out that it had stopped getting AC power through the cord at all. In the process of discovering this problem one battery was completely drained and has never worked again. The problem was that the DC jack was cracked. I bought another one and had it soldered on. Put everything back together and it booted up great, got AC just fine again. No problems for a week or so. Then the powering up problem began again and has gotten much, much worse.
When it does power up, everything runs fine, no problems with software.
It has been suggested that this might be a motherboard problem. Does this seem most likely or can anyone think of cheaper possibilities?
At one point I changed all power settings so that it should never automatically go into standby and left it powered on, plugged into AC, to see if it would still go off - and eventually it did.
The light on the front shows that it is getting AC power and that the battery is charged, but the lights for hard drive, etc that usually come on at power up do not come on.
History, in case it's related: it had been having maybe the beginnings of this problem when I found out that it had stopped getting AC power through the cord at all. In the process of discovering this problem one battery was completely drained and has never worked again. The problem was that the DC jack was cracked. I bought another one and had it soldered on. Put everything back together and it booted up great, got AC just fine again. No problems for a week or so. Then the powering up problem began again and has gotten much, much worse.
When it does power up, everything runs fine, no problems with software.
It has been suggested that this might be a motherboard problem. Does this seem most likely or can anyone think of cheaper possibilities?