Reviving a dead X30 - success story

[nfraser01]

Hi. First post but wanted to share this story.

I acquired an X30 from eBay but it turned out to be DOA. It would power on, I'd get a power light and the fan would spin up but no display or response to any keys. No video oputput to an external monitor. I didn't want to send it back because it came with some interesting add-ons including a PCMCIA Zip Drive

Having looked at all the likely scenarious on this forum and others I decided to start taking bits out and testing at each stage.

The short version is that removing the modem daughter card revived the X30 to at least getting it to POST.

Reassembling with the modem card in place also allowed it to POST.

Howver it would not boot from the internal hard drive or external USB device.

Further testing found that removing one of the memory cards would allow full function.

The moral of the story is that you can have more than one problem present when acquiruing old machines, so just have that in the back of your mind when diagnosing/troubleshooting.

HTH

Neil

[axur-delmeria]

The basic of basics when troubleshooting: remove everything, then start at the bare minimum. Booting without RAM is an option, if only to verify that it POSTs when you hear the 1-3-3-1 error beep code .

[nfraser01]

Interstingly I've also got a fully working x31 that wouldn't POST today. Removed the laptop battery and it came straight back to life. I've had VAIO's do this as well...

[axur-delmeria]

Dead/dying batteries tend to cause weird issues on laptops. I've encountered cases where the laptop turns on, but shuts down before the OS finishes booting, even with the charger plugged in; the issue disappeared after the battery was removed.