Common Laptop Problems and Some Solutions: Liquid Spills, Cooling, Power, and LCD Screen

Troubleshooting Common Laptop Problems

Liquid spills on the laptop

I have repaired many Laptops exposed to accidental liquid spills. This is a recoverable condition in most cases. It is very important to respond to the cleaning process as soon as possible (before corrosion or internal soaking occurs)! Liquid intrusion can cause the following types of damage to the laptop:

• Short circuit due to conductive nature of wet liquid (problem may go away as liquid dries)
• Short circuit due to dry liquid residue
• Corrosion occurs (particularly volatile with some acidic soft drinks – Coca-Cola)
• Electronic components damaged by previous short circuits

Possible solution: Immediately when a spill occurs, turn off the laptop, turn it upside down and leave it upside down (drain) for at least 20-30 minutes. Next, remove any connected cables, remove the power pack and battery, and allow the unit to air dry overnight.

To remove any residual liquid: Have someone remove the keyboard assembly and do some additional cleaning. It may be helpful to use cotton swabs and distilled water to remove any contamination. When corrosive side effects (with coke) are suspected, gently rub suspected areas with a cotton swab moistened with CRC or WD-40. Dry the treated areas so that only a light film of WD-40 anti-corrosion solution remains. While the keyboard is being removed, use a bright light and a magnifying glass to inspect the areas where the liquid has made contact.

Laptop randomly shuts down

This is often due to:

• The AC power adapter detects an overload of power consumption
• Processor overheating due to internal dust buildup (clogged fan)
• The AC power adapter cannot meet normal power needs (defective power adapter)
• Battery overheating, due to internal battery failure or charge levels
• Intermittent short circuit or open connection (check the condition of the power cables)

On older laptops, the most common reason is poor cooling. Try going somewhere with air conditioning and see if that helps. Inspect the areas near the internal cooling fan; See if there is a buildup of dust fibers. Easy way to check this; With the unit running, feel the airflow from the cooling outlet(s). Is the airflow too low? If the answer is yes, and the unit is at normal operating temperature, this may indicate that the internal cooling system is partially clogged.

Troubleshoot Laptop LCD Video Screen

Here are some tips and tricks to troubleshoot and fix laptop video issues. Video problems are very common on laptops and with the following tips you should be able to detect and eliminate basic laptop video problems.

The laptop’s LCD screen has a dim image or is very dark

Take a close look at the laptop’s LCD screen and see if you can see a very faint image. If it can, then it is possible that the laptop’s LCD lid close switch is stuck in the closed position. In this mode, the backlight remains off, even with the LCD screen lid open. This is to conserve power when the laptop is ON with the LID closed. Check the LCD screen lid close switch. It’s a small plastic pin located near the rear hinges of the LCD screen. Try tapping the switch on the lid a few times to see if you can turn on the screen backlight. If that doesn’t help, I’d suggest replacing the FL inverter board.

Laptop LCD screen is solid white or distorted

Connect an external computer monitor to the laptop. If the external monitor display is fine, then you have a problem with the laptop’s LCD screen or the LCD cable connection. If the image on the external monitor is the same as on the laptop’s LCD screen, it is likely a faulty integrated video, which means replacing the laptop’s motherboard.

A typical laptop LCD screen assembly

This is a simplified explanation of the basic components involved in a laptop LCD video screen problem:

• LCD connector: Video data is sent from the motherboard to the LCD screen. A video cable also supplies voltage to the FL inverter board on the LCD panel.
• FL inverter PCB: This section converts the low voltage DC source to high voltage AC as required to power the backlight bulb. If the FL inverter PCB is defective, the LCD will show a very dim image on the laptop screen
• CCFL (backlight bulb): When the backlight bulb is working, you can see the image on the LCD screen. With some laptops, the backlight bulb is part of the LCD screen assembly and must be replaced with a complete LCD screen assembly. Requires a laptop repair shop to replace the backlight bulb
• Laptop lid close switch: This switch is a small switch (mechanical or magnetic) located near the rear hinges of the screen. Most laptops will hibernate or go into standby mode when the LCD screen is closed. This is accomplished by interfacing with the laptop’s BIOS power management software. In turn, this is linked to the Windows operating system.

Laptop is slow and continually shows internet popups

The laptop is most likely infected with spyware. Spyware is software that hides on your computer and attempts to collect information about your Internet activity. Spyware is sometimes transferred to your computer when you download ‘unknown’ free software or when you connect to free music programs on the Internet (KaZaA, Limewire, BearShare, etc.). The best method to remove and further prevent spyware is to use Spybot. Read my spyware help page.

Laptop is frozen, not responding to keyboard or mouse, can’t turn off

With most laptops I have seen this happen from time to time! The easy method to solve this problem is:

• Unplug the power cable from the laptop
• Remove the battery from the laptop
• Wait a moment (10 seconds)
• Put the laptop battery back into the unit
• Reconnect the laptop’s power cord
• Turn on the laptop

The laptop will boot normally and be fully operational. If you were working on a Microsoft Word or Excel document at the time of the problem, the data may have been automatically recovered. In this case, you will automatically be prompted to view the last document you worked on when you open the Microsoft program.

Fix laptop hibernation and sleep issues

Power management options on laptops sometimes cause problems. Hibernation and Sleep modes are power-saving modes of operation for battery-powered notebook computers.

Hibernation is a procedure by which the working state (content) of your work is stored on disk before the computer enters hibernation or sleep. When the laptop wakes up, it is restored to the exact place it was before. Sleep and Hibernate use a low power consumption mode, with enough power to preserve the contents of said memory. This means that the laptop can be activated without a hard reset and without loss of work.

Laptop does not wake up from sleep or hibernation

Here are my tried suggestions:

• Give it time: Some older laptops can take up to 30 seconds to fully wake up.
• Some laptops have special ‘Wake up’ keys or buttons; read the manual
• Press and hold the laptop’s power button for five seconds or more. Some laptops are set to sleep or hibernate just by pressing the power button. Holding the power button for more than 5 seconds will usually reset and reboot the laptop
• As a last resort, remove the laptop battery and power cord, wait 30 seconds, replace the batteries, and reconnect the power cord.

Now that the laptop is operational, you need to investigate the underlying problem. Typically, such issues stem from a disagreement between the power management features of the BIOS of laptops and Windows.

A conflict with the BIOS power management of laptops and Windows power management is the most common cause of such a wake failure. Try different settings in the BIOS to see if that might resolve the issue. Look to see if the laptop’s BIOS is set to suspend the computer and how it compares to the value set in Windows. In most cases, let Windows control power management.