Hey, Mark. On Tuesday, November 27, 2012 19:21:13, Mark Wallace wrote: > Both of my systems are down. Need help repairing them. > > First system. Good duel core processor, laptop. Compaq Presario CG57 I > think that the monitor needs replacing.
Since it's a laptop, I think you mean that the LCD panel needs replacing. Typically what fails is either the CCFL backlight or the inverter for the backlight; however the CCFL is part of the LCD panel and is difficult to replace (I've previously spoken about that on this list) and replacing the LCD panel is both easier and less risky. $250 is not an unreasonable price to have this repaired IMHO, except that I've seen used CG57 models online being sold for less than that. (Amazon -- $238 from seller EZCORP) A cousin of mine from Long Island that does this kind of repair usually looks up the LCD panel for the laptop model and then orders it on e-Bay. See if you can figure out which LCD panel is in this laptop. From there you can look at e-Bay and figure out if the LCD panel is affordable. > Help needed. Make sure that I order the right part on the internet. Then > help me install it. > > Second system. > > Older Dell D 400.Laptop Dropped it. Keyboard doesn't work put plug in > keyboard does. Built in speaker doesn't work but plug in speaker does. I > may have damaged the hard drive (40 gig) because I get error messages. I > was hoping to give it to a friend as a gift because she doesn't have a > system at all. Retail price today of a Dell D400 is about $200. Keep that in mind as you look for replacement parts like Hard Disk and keyboard. 40 GB is tiny by today's standards but is certainly enough to get a working Linux box. As this box is old the laptop hard disk might be IDE, and the BIOS might have issues with larger laptop hard disks. Some BIOSes have a limit of about 128 GB. So do some research before trying to find a replacement. For a "bandaid fix", try using some of the hard disk recovery tools to find out if you can work around issues of bad cylinders/sectors. To give you an idea -- an 80 GB IDE laptop hard disk at Newegg is $110, and the next size up is 160 GB for $105, assuming the BIOS can handle that capacity. If you dropped the laptop, then the issue with the keyboard might be that the connector for it has come loose internally. It's usually not difficult to remove the plastic covers and screws to remove the keyboard to try to reseat the connector. Be careful with the connector and ribbon cable connected to it though, because they are usually a bit delicate. -- Chris -- Chris Knadle [email protected] _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) Vassar College Dec 5 - SysAdmin Panel Jan 9 - High Performance Computing Feb 6 - Raspberry Pi
