so its just a faulty power supply?

[Sputnik]

Not sure you can resolder motherboard traces can you?

I've done them before by cleaning any varnish off the track etc. and then laying a piece of tinned copper wire on it and soldering it to the track of the board all the way along.

[watercooled]

Eeew, you should have said...

I don't mind doing things for mates but anything more than a 'thanks' is rare & gets my goat when I've just saved them hundreds, it's the thought that counts as I don't do it for profit but a nice bottle of Woodford Reserve or something would go down well!

It's when people seem to take the mick I hate, was getting a lift after coming back from hols (as in we'd just landed) & as I was putting the case in the boot it just so happened there was a PC in there that was 'not working & I was going to scrap it' - what a coincidence!

I normally sort them out for free just to help out but it annoys me when people start taking the proverbial, inviting you over or to go out or something and then subtly let you know a PC needs sorting. I think my glare alone gets the answer across...

[GoNz0]

Not sure you can resolder motherboard traces can you?

apart from the post above with the bit of wire over the track method i always find tracing the track to another solder blob further along the board will do the trick, que the bridging wire and after that epoxy the board back together

[Behemoth]

Indeed - urgh!

Only worse laptop I've had the misfortune of working with recently has been a Toshiba Satellite (non-pro) mid-range gaming laptop.

I bought 2 for the bosses nephews and I really, really wish I hadn't. They're ludicrously hot - so hot they turn themselves off after a couple of hours, even when idle. The hard drives in both have died (and when I sent one back to Toshiba, asking to keep the broken one to attempt data recovery, they asked for £125 for the confirmed dead HDD, despite replacing it!!). The motherboard (or CPU, or GPU) has died. The screen died on one.

Despite dismantling Acers and replacing broken and cracked screens for a few years now, I was nearly defeated by replacing the screen on the Toshiba. Like Acer, lots of pulling of plastic fascias is required (as normal with laptops), yet the tabs on the Acers didn't simply snap off, as they did the Toshiba. The internal cable for the keyboard are also a bit trickier than on the Acers too.

Horrible, horrible laptops. Their Satellite Pro systems must be far superior. Frankly lard is superior.

That happens with any Toshiba Laptop. Every model of their Laptop that got sold in the store I worked in from 2007 - 2008 came back to use at some point with pretty much the same fault. They all over heated. Didn't matter how much was paid either, £349 or £699 they were all a bunch of wrotten apples and if I knew I could get my customer to get away from the "I had a Toshiba before" mindset I'd sell them a HP or a Dell.

I found out not so long ago that Toshiba weren't building their own laptops anymore. They were getting some unknown company to do it for them and they were just basically rebadged cheap Laptops. Or very expensive lap warmers as they became affectionaly known in my store at the time.