Dear all,
First thanks for considering my technical problem. All recommendations are welcome.
My problem regards my Advent 7080 / ECS 910 laptop.
One day it decided to stop working well.
Here I describe the problem: when I press the power button, only appears a white screen (or sometimes nothing whatsoever).
However, even though nothing appears on the screen, I can listen to the laptop booting into Windows XP MCE.
I have tried to connect the laptop to an external monitor, but nothing. I also tried to take the graphics card, RAM, HD, optical drive, and nothing. I even totally dismantled it and no response other than white screen.
In my opinion there might be a problem between the North Bridge and the VGA channel. The booting of the laptop is done with one bip, but sometimes more can be listened, specially when the battery is low.
The previous owner changed the LCD, but still nothing happened. A store close from Swindon gave him a quote of £180 for a new motherboard, but I think that it might go even higher.
I would be thankful if ECS, that is also monitoring this blog, could find me a new board but I still have no answer from Taiwan.
At the moment I am considering sending the laptop to a competent motherboard repairer but it seems that laptop motherboards are tailor made and no schematics or electronic documentation is given to service centres that limit themselves to part changing or simple power repairs.
This is a far more serious problem that requires an experienced VGA and motherboard laptop engineer, and I don't know if I will find someone or a company with such talent.
I am looking forward reading your comments and advices and if you do ECS 910 / Advent 7080 servicing please advice me.
David R