Laptop repairs

[RobF]

Any suggestions on where I could send my 2.5yr old Acer 5620G Extensa laptop for repairs? It was plugged in during a monster thunderstorm here lately and I suspect motherboard or memory problems. Memory testing utilities show a myriad of errors, and will only boot successfully about 1/10 times (with eventual BSOD anyway).

I imagine it would cost $100 for someone to pull it apart and tell me it will cost $250 to put in a new board :rolleyes: (and laptop is probably only worth $300 at max anyway)

I should add I've already ghosted the hard drive to a previously working state and still have problems.

Any service suggestions appreciated.

[snowyskiesau]

The obvious answer would be Acer themselves but as you said, they're probably going to charge you more than you want to tell you something you don't want to hear :)

Does your household insurance policy cover items like this? Might be worth checking. I was able to claim a damaged computer on my insurance a while back. Power surge caused by faulty household wiring or so the claim read.

[RobF]

Thanks Geoff. I'll have to check my policy about the insurance - it certainly crossed my mind to look at that side of things.

Anyone else have any experience with laptop repairs?

[kustard]

Try these guys, they seem to have good reviews from the simple search I did, hopefully they are close to you.

http://www.fixmylaptop.com.au/

[Tandum]

Rob, boot to bios and turn everything off. Just enable hard drives and see if it boots. I'll ask around to see who can do laptop mobos in brisbane, I don;t :)

[RobF]

Thanks Robin. I should have thought to send you a PM.Alas, the Phoenix TrustedCore BIOS in it appears to be locked in someway - almost no worthwhile options in there, and certainly nothing for turning off hardware I tried disabling the video card in windows (device/hardware manager) when it occasionally got that far without success

[stefan]

Hi,

I've moved up from Canberra recently and one of my many jobs down there was repairing lappys and data recovery. If you like I can have a look and see if your suspicions are correct and get your data off your old lappy for you :D

[RobF]

Thanks for the offer Stefan, but I'm ok with getting the data off via an external drive caddy and will probably talk to a friend as next step. Was keen to hear what advice people hear might offer though.

[RobF]

I was able to try some replacement RAM and seems I might be in luck just replacing my old 2Gb stick. Going to buy some tomorrow. Only $50 to give it a go....:P

[RobF]

Whew. I hadn't expected to be lucky, but new RAM seems to have me back in business. Yay.:D