Gateway m275 won't start up any ideas?

[sandman1313]

The problem started when I bought a used computer off craigslist...

It lasted two weeks. Several times it would start up but the screen was blank. So I'd unplug it and take out the battery (which is shot) and wait a few minutes. Put it back in and it would start up like normal. After, it would work fine for a few days. The last day, the usual trick didn't work, went on line, on a friend's computer, and tried leaving it w/o battery for a half hour after holding down power button for over ten seconds to release charge.

It worked and after I restarted it, that was the end.

Now it doesn't start up. When I put the battery in, it sounds as if the processor is humming, but doesn't go into start up. Hold down power button for ten which stops the purring. Trying to restart only makes it purr again. No led lights no monitor no fun.

Anyone have any ideas?

I was thinking the motherboard may have gone out...

[DRTigerlilly]

yup sounds like motherboard.

[Kyle Porter]

definitely the board. Sorry dude.

[ClockworkDoc]

Yeah, it seems like people like to sell broken stuff on Craigslist a lot. Heck, I just bought a TV stand that near broke my new set.

[sandman1313]

Damn.

Thanks fellas.

Should I find the cheapest motherboard and try to sell it? or are these good enough machines that I should hang on to it?

[sandman1313]

Anyone have a spare m275 motherboard they want to sell?

[GreenSkunk]

Do a search on Google http://www.google.com/search?q=m275+motherboard as you can see there were other results under "shopping"

#1 for me was http://www.mundocorp.com/m275.html. They have a whole slew of parts.

[Grimnir]

I'd like to chime in with the old saying "I'm too poor to be cheap".

You should evaluate if it is worth it to buy a new motherboard for the system vs just getting a new system or refurb from a reputable supplier.

[SDreamer]

Kinda late, bit that exactly what happened to me on my CX210X (think that's the consumer model name for that model). Anyways, I'm replying to this post through it right now. After 2 years and 2 months after buying it, it had those same symptoms, no clue why, just didn't start up one morning. Just recently my dad and I gave it one last shot, reseated everything, and booted it on without the fans on till the chips heated up a bit, rinse and repeat, then put the fans back on, and it booted up. It's been about a month since then. A friend of mine, who owns a computer repair shop I worked for, suggested it could have been pressure from the cooling unit, since once we tightened all the screws very tightly, it didn't work again. It was either the screws were over tightened, or a screw was grounding something, I'm leaning towards the heat sink being tightened more than needed. You can drive giving it a try. For at least 3 months I thought it was a dead video chip. I just checked for bios updates recently, and noticed I wasn't up to date, and the latest bios update was for the video bios. That's my experience with it anyways, we still don't know the exact reason why it did it in the first place...

[sandman1313]

The problem lay within my motherboard. I bought one for $65.oo and took the computer apart. Once put together again, it worked well, main problem being that the new motherboard had only a 1.4ghz processor. So now my computer works, but not as well as it did.

If a person pays attention to how a computer is put together, then there is no mystery as to how to put it together again.

as long as you don't touch a battery or any other electric causing object, while fixing a motherboard or whatnot, then there should be no worries.