Compaq Presario F700 turn off 2 seconds and off loop

I believe this may be an issue of a dirty heat sink and fan. I have seen this happen many many times, when I strip down the laptop to remove the heat sink and fan I often find a dust and lint clogging up the heatsink. It is almost like pulling out a piece of felt. Once this is removed the system will power up fine. You can sometimes use a can of air to blow out the dust, but on many systems that have a poor design you will not be able to remove the lint/dust without disassembling the laptop. The reason it shutsdown is to prevent the cpu from over heating, it will automatically shutdown the computer when the cpu reaches a certain temperature. Good luck...

Is it working fine after 2 seconds. If yes, then no issue.

Hello, thanks for the quick repy.

I realized that it is less than 2 seconds..it's probably 1 second. All leds will go on and you can feel the DVD Rom and HDD starting up as well, but then ...almost instantly... 1 second aprx. it will shut down for about 5 seconds and start again. As I said, no beeps , no sounds, no unusual feel or internal  noise and no screen.

I haven't yet tried to clean it as web tracker suggested, because i dont have my tools with me. But i really hope i can fix this by cleaning it inside. I have read many posts and even youtube about HP and COMPAQ laptops with burned video chips... (NVIDIA in this case) .. Some ppl reported they had to change the whole MB because of the integrated video chip.

I really wish this is not the case.

Best regards,

A key that it may indicate be a dirty fan/heat sink, is when you first turn on the system the fan is running very fast, then the laptop shuts right off or it may go through a cycle of trying to boot up then shutting off.  If you get no fan noise it is possible that the fan is not working at all. If it was a problem with the video card or video chip on the mother board than it probably would not power off but would continue in the boot process, you just won't get any video.... but obviously since there are issues proving otherwise, ie known issues with HP/compaq equipment this may not always be the case.

here my laptop troubleshooting guide :
- if no display - test with an external monitor
- test also with a known good battery !
- remove battery and AC adaptor, hold power button for 20 sec, connect AC and reboot --> any display ? if NO -->
- disconnect all disk and cd drives, battery , and other cards and peripherals, leave only 1 ram stick
- boot -->any display ?
- if NO remove all ram and reboot --> if NO beeps, mobo or cpu bad ; if it beeps, replace ram stick

Hi, my recomendation is to strip down the laptop- remove, optical, hard drive, memory, keyboard, mini cards, modem module and start the machine on battery, if it runs POST and errors out on memmory - beep code (maybe some leds flashing too) then 1 of the components removed is most likely causing the problem. Start with inserting ram - if the laptop runs on 2 modules insert just 1 first. If it fails right here do a cross check with the other module and with the other slot (try all combinations) to make sure that not just 1 slot or 1 module is dead.

As already mentioned by previous commenters it might be the graca issue, but i have seen too lot of laptops behaving like this for dead memory (dead 1 slot aswell) and for dead hard drive.

Good luck!

Hello Experts,

i really appreciate all that attention! It is also nice to recognize some of you from my previous posts...i must start by thanking you all!

I will go through all your recommendations, it will however take some time. I will do it slowly and carefully since laptops are more sensitive than regular pc´s, plus my experience repairing these things is limited..  

I will report back on Monday and let you guys know!

Edbedb: I really hope this is not the case (a burned out nVidia Chip) ... we will find out after I go through other recommendations / diagnostics first. :)

Best regards,

Mauricio

I didn't say it was "a burned out nVidia Chip". I said the Nvidia chip has to reflowed. That means it has to be heated to a temperature that is high enough to melt the solder but not so hot as to burn up the chip.
 

Hello Edbedb,

sorry, I misinterpreted your post. However I don´t seem to understand what you mean (it's my english. It´s not my native language and sometimes I get confused). Do you mean the chip could still be usable? That would give me some hopes :) !

Best regards,

Mauricio

" Do you mean the chip could still be usable?"
Yes, that's exactly what I mean. There are places here in the USA that will repair it for around $65 US.
It's not very difficult to do but I would recomend having it done.

Hello Edbedb!

that is good news! I am not in the US but I know a guy who has repaired MB's before, I will give him a call monday morning. In the meantime I will discard all other possible reasons (memory, memory slots, devices, etc...)

Thank you,

Mauricio

Sounds like a good plan. If he has any questions about the procedure you can have him contact me.

I'm one of the guys who do such repairs - reflow or reball nvidia chips or change it.

BUT there is a lot of problems other then Nvidia which can cause this problem.

Why it happens: There is a multi-IO chip in every notebook which does ugly lot of things ( driving the LEDs, controling the keyboard, connection the BIOS, serving a power button etc.)
THis chip also monitors the power circuits of your system. So if some of the main voltages fail to be there or are too much drained - the chip even power off the system or restart it.

If it's nvidia - than because of fault or cold spot - it drains too much power so the multi-io power_good pin become Low and the chip restart the system.

The possible places: Main power supply chip, vcore power supply chip, crystal or clock generator chip, multi-IO itself; and then the high-power components like nvidia.

There is one more thing you can try yourself (as the problem could also be in BIOS). You can start the system recovery after the system starts it's a combination of key pres which can save you in case of bios corruption (in HP case is usually a "Windows + B" keypress. - to test it, unplug battery unplug power, hold the keypress and connect adapter while holding the keys, then push power button (still holding the keys). - if the system restarts withing the same one or two seconds then it's hardware for sure.

Petr

 

In my experience, fixing that specific problem with that model motherboard by re-flowing the Nvidia chip has worked every time.
Can it be something else? Of course, but the chances of that are slim at best.

Hello Experts,

sadly the guy who should help me with the solder is in the hospital for over a week now. I am about to give up on this....I am not sure if I should try the solder solution myself. I have never did that before...it sounds complicated and delicate...maybe I should give up... . Any last minutes comments are welcome!! Thank you very much, and once again I apologize for keeping you on hold for so much time.

Best regards,

Mauricio

Both (rewarded) experts seem to be VERY experienced. I am certain they would have fixed the laptop if they would have had it. Edbedb knew what happened from the beginning and offered me guidance on how to fix it. Shef7 gave me clear instructions and also seemed to know how to repair the chip .... The truth is I don't have the technical skills to do it myself. I also dont have a hot air gun... or tools used to fix MB's and chips. Thanks to all experts and their comments. The first ones helped me ruling out memory failure and other devices that could be interfering with the laptops performance.

Best regards,

M.