HP Pavillion Dv6000 wont boot

Gary Norris

Hi all,

I have a HP Pavillion DV6000 (2GB Ram, 256MB Nvidia 7200 Go, Turion 64 1.8Ghz, Win 7).

Its an old laptop which I began using again recently for light stuff like word processing, watching videos, browsing the internet etc.
I cleaned it up a bit by buying a new battery and taking it apart to remove dust etc and its been working fine for about a month.

One day I turned it on and it wouldn't successfully boot.

I tried windows repair and then in safe mode and noticed that the display was appearing in 6 separate screens like in the picture below.

I also tried to boot an ubuntu live cd but again it didn't finish booting. It gave an error message similar to
"flgrx: bios checksum mismatch"

Has anyone else had a similar issue?

Would it be worth fixing ?
I think its a hardware (graphics card) issue and since its integrated this means I would have to buy a new motherboard?


Thanks

Video chip failure. Very common problem with this model; in fact I'm surprised yours hadn't failed sooner.

bb12

i have the dv9000 model and am always getting the video chip failure issue...i replaced the chip the first time i got it...that cost a lot!

after i got the laptop back and it started to fail again a couple of month later i decided to look more into it.

i found a quick fix for this problem that sounds mad but actually works...

take out the battery and the hard drive. seal up all the air vents with tape and wrap the laptop in towels or bubble wrap and leave it on for about 2 hours...then let it cool down for about 40 mins afterwards, put everything back and hopefully it'll boot up fine..
it's a quick solution that basically makes the faulty chip solder itself back onto the board without having to take anything apart...

has worked for me about 4 times now...i usually get 2 or 3 months work out of the laptop before it starts to go again...

Overheal

Gary Norris wrote: »

Would it be worth fixing ?

No. I would have warned you before you even bought a new battery for it. The GPU alone is 7 years old. The Pavillions were good laptops in their day, if not for the plagued nvidia issues, but at this age they have entered obsolescence. Even a mid-range AMD CPU new, like the A6, will get you a laptop with fully 4-5 times the performance computationally and graphically. And be more energy efficient at that. Theres a dozen other reasons to upgrade, including RAM, a fresh motherboard (7 year old capacitors are just priming to fail any time now), other random technology improvements, USB 3.0, etc etc. I remember trying to run 1080p video on my pavillion when it was new... it nearly melted

Gary Norris

Hi All

Today I tried reheating using a heat gun in my lab. I did this twice for about 2 mins but it didn't work. Thanks for all your replies by the way. I can get a new motherboard for about 100 euro.

In this video its a similar issue to mine except its a blank screen rather than 6.
http://www.insidemylaptop.com/fix-video-failure-hp-pavilion-dv2000-dv6000-dv9000-notebooks/comment-page-1/#comments

Overheal

thats 100 yoyos that is far more economically spent on a new machine, tbh. You're way past the point of diminishing returns on that unit.

Overheal

Overheal wrote: »

thats 100 yoyos that is far more economically spent on a new machine, tbh. You're way past the point of diminishing returns on that unit.

Agreed. Chances are the replacement board will have the same fault.

riclad

You Could sell it for parts on adverts ie,

OR DO this http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-35186-hp-pavillion-dv6000-graphic-card-problem
http://www.google.com/search?gcx=c&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=fix+dv6000++grahics+card



http://www.insidemylaptop.com/fix-video-failure-hp-pavilion-dv2000-dv6000-dv9000-notebooks/

HelpWithIT

You need to get it reballed to fix it properly, some places just "literally heat up the board", others use copper shims, others just reflow hte chip, only proper job is to get it reballed or put your money towards a new machine.

HelpWithIT

HelpWithIT wrote: »

You need to get it reballed to fix it properly, some places just "literally heat up the board", others use copper shims, others just reflow hte chip, only proper job is to get it reballed or put your money towards a new machine.

Agreed, these are only temporary fixes. It usually only last a few weeks then fails again.

Tow

Gary Norris wrote: »

Today I tried reheating using a heat gun in my lab. I did this twice for about 2 mins but it didn't work.

You need to get it up to 230/260C to melt the lead free solder, you could also squirt in some liquid flux.

HelpWithIT

the lead free solder is the problem...it's useless

unkel

Gary Norris wrote: »

Would it be worth fixing ?

Spending €100 to get it properly reballed would be worth it imho. You'll probably get a few more years of light use out of it. Nice laptops, apart from the graphics issue

As others said, don't get a new motherboard. It is bound to develop the same problem at some stage...

As a shot to nothing, you can try the DYI reflow. It might not work, it might work. You might get a few days out of it, a few weeks, or even months. Even if it fails and you burn out the motherboard, the laptop is not gonna be worth less than it is now