I everyone, I am new to this forum and discovered it via a search - it seems to be a great community, I hope to learn and contribute much in the future!!!

I have a problem with a HP nx6125 laptop which I am hoping that someone may have some info on and may be able to help?:

When the power button is switch on, light come on and go out as expected, drives spin and fan starts. Then after a couple of seconds, there is a small click from inside (sounds like HDD) and the fan stops, then after 2 seconds more, fan comes on, then 2 seconds later goes off again, this repeats itself about 15 times. During this on/off of the fan, the HDD light and the DVD drive lights flash in rhythm with the fan going on/off. After the 15 or so cycles, the HDD light and fan both say on. During the whole process from start to finish, the screen is completely dead, even attaching an external monitor doesnt bring anything up.

I also have another motherboard for this laptop which has a different problem, it cannot pick up a HDD in the bios. The HDD works fine and has been tested on another laptop - I have also tried a different (working) HDD with this mobo and the same happens - undetected. The laptop is able to boot and post the bios when using this laptop and I am even able to get it running from a Linux live CD, but there is no HDD to access in the linux OS (as expected).

I am wondering if there are any suggestions for either motherboard - a fix or a work around maybe? I am thinking that the second one above is an IDE controller prob (anyone know which is the IDE controller on these boards?). I have re-soldered the HDD connector onto the mobo to iron out any dry joint issues, but still getting the same thing. I was going to check tonight to make sure that there is a connection inside the block between every hole and the mobo to iron out any internal connection block problems.

Maybe I can get one working motherboard from the two non-working ones with different issues? Anyt ideas?

I look forward to hearing from anyone who may be able to help/offer any kind of solution

Thanks!

Adendum to the problem ....

Removed HDD from laptop with first motherboard in (the one with the start/stop fan issue), removed battery and pressed power for 10 seconds, then left it to stand for a little while. Reattached battery (but left out HDD) and powered it up. It booted and got to the 'Replace system disc' message.

It gets even more puzzling ..... any ideas anyone?

Cheers

I'm not sure I got everything from your commentary, but it sounds like you're saying you independently verified the HDD is good, but that HDD won't boot on one mobo and the same HDD isn't recognized on a second mobo (and obviously won't boot on that mobo either)

Here are some questions/ideas...some are obvious so don't be too upset if I seem to be covering basic stuff.

Is the HDD already formatted and partitioned with a compatible filesystem?

When you removed it from the system, and the system then powered-up "ok", did you try re-installing that same (tested good?) HDD and see if the fan/LED on/off cycling symptom returned?

Have you tried booting with any other HDD?

Can you hear the drive spin-up?

Have you tried booting from the HDD with the DVD drive disconnected (both data and power if separate)

Have you verified your BIOS is
1) set to boot from HDD and
2) using auto HDD parameters detect? If someone set it to invalid manual parameters for number of tracks, number of heads, etc. that could screw things up.

Have you verified the HDD should work with that mobo? It's possible that it requires more power than the mobo can reliably deliver, among other things.

If jumpers are on the drive, are they set correctly? I've run across a few odd duck drives every now and then, including one that had both connector master/slave selects AND jumper select capability on the circuit board. I also have a very vague ancient memory of running across a notebook drive that had some sort of compatibility jumper...don't remember much other than when it was in the wrong position it didn't work in the notebook. Don't remember the manufacturer.

I'm impressed you tackled soldering on a notebook mobo...without professional tools, heck even with professional tools, those can be incredibly difficult to work with and not cause more damage.

Hi John and many thanks for the great responce!

Unfortunately, I havnt been able to get to the BIOS to change any settings or look to see whats in there. When the fan start/stop thing goes on, It happens before the system boots the BIOS and apart from the drive spinning and fan spinning, the system appears dead! The one occasion that it did get past the BIOS (i.e when the HDD had been removed and left for a while) it was such a suprise that I didnt get to the setup menu soon enough

I have tested the HDD and it works fine, partitioned and formatted correctly, I have also tried another HDD in it that works fine also but the system still did the same thing.

After the system booted to the 'replace system disc' prompt, I shut it down and then started it up again, the fan stop/start thing happened again (everything else dead). All this happened with the HDD removed so the issue is not related to the HDD I am almost positive.

With regard to the soldering, I didnt mention that the tools I used were not professional and to be honest, that was quite a menial task for me - the HDD connection block that is soldered to the system board is not micro-soldering and with a very fine solder set-up it is quite straight forward.

Thanks again for taking the time out to help me John and I look forward to any other suggestions you may have.

Chris

With notebooks, it's pretty hard to talk about specifics because they are all different and sometimes use proprietary technologies.

At this point, since you clearly have access to the mobo, aside from the obvious stuff like try reseating memory and daughter card(s), modem/sound/connectors, etc. there's not much I can offer from here. Sometimes a daughter card can cause a problem such as you've described, as they can screw-up the raw data bus and power bus in very unpredictable ways.

You could try booting while keeping various major chips cooled with a non-conducting freeze spray...see if there's a component thermal problem. Watch out for condensation though. There's often enough contaminant on the mobo to make a conductive path even in relatively pure water (such as found in atmospheric condensate)

I'd suggest re-flashing the mobo BIOS with a newer version but it sounds like you wouldn't be able to do that reliably and then you'd definitely be stuck with a piece of junk even if later you did fix a hardware problem.

I read the main problem with the first computer... I believe it is somehting on the motherboard that cause this problem, because my computer has the same problem, except that mine turns on the screen backligh before it shuts down and do it again until it stays with the fan on.

I don't remmeber whty I tried it, but when my computer did this the first time I put pressure on the upper left corner of the keyboard and the computer turn on without a problem, and it went windows and everything, didn't havd any problem untill I shut it down and tried to turn it on again.

does somebody knows what manages the power on the computer or some thing about where does the computer energy charges so it can charge the complete computar and start booting.... may be that pqrt its damaged.

Hi fellows,

if I remove the 2nd memoryboard and switch off WLAN and also remove the akku-pack
the Notebook boots and works fine.
As soon as I connect any device to usb (which needs additional power) the fan is pumping and the notebook works very slowly or hangs.

There is no difference between working with only the powersupply or only with a fully charged akkupack. So I assume, the failure is in the pice with transforms the input voltage to the voltages the motherboard works with.

Mike, I just retired a HP notebook, a 7200 series with some of the same issues, up until it totally died on me.
I've since upgraded to a 9000 series, and within a few months the transformer started to overheat. HP was kind enough to send me a replacement transformer, no questions, no cost, no RMA.
On my out of warantee 7200 series it appears it was the CPU fan and onboard regulators that were the culprits.

Ah, the DV9000's......those are the worst laptops to pull apart and put back together, so many damn screws. and they have a common motherboard dry joint issue, we get a lot of these in.

Hello everyone. Nice to meet you all.


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