Hello all,
Last week I replaced a malfunctioning display cable connecting motherboard and LCD display on my Acer Aspire 5810T laptop. Before putting all the screws back in, I tested the system: Windows 7 was running fine and the screen was not showing any disturbances anymore. Happy with that result, I closed up the laptop. But then it suddenly wouldn't boot anymore: the harddisk (Toshiba MK5055GSX, 500GB 2.5" SATA) was not being recognized.
Troubleshooting process:
Tentative conclusion: either something on the motherboard or something on the subboard is damaged (invisibly to my eye so far), perhaps due to static electricity when I was re-assembling the laptop.
I'm not a hardware expert by any means, so I would appreciate it if you could assist me in pinpointing what could be wrong: what to look for, how to continue troubleshooting. Any ideas?
Thank you!
Last week I replaced a malfunctioning display cable connecting motherboard and LCD display on my Acer Aspire 5810T laptop. Before putting all the screws back in, I tested the system: Windows 7 was running fine and the screen was not showing any disturbances anymore. Happy with that result, I closed up the laptop. But then it suddenly wouldn't boot anymore: the harddisk (Toshiba MK5055GSX, 500GB 2.5" SATA) was not being recognized.
Troubleshooting process:
■ Checked in BIOS whether the hard disk is being detected at all. No.
■ Thinking that I might have knocked something loose when assembling the laptop again, I opened it back up and checked for loose cables. None found. Nothing out of the ordinary (afaik) seen at the sata connector either.
■ Booted from USB with Puppylinux to see whether that could recognize the disk: no. All other components (CD, USB, wifi, display) working fine.
■ Placed the hard disk in another laptop, booted from Puppylinux USB again there to avoid potential boot problems in another hardware environment. In this other system, the harddisk was working perfectly, all partitions accessible.
■ Knowing that the problem was not with the disk, I assumed that something was wrong between motherboard and disk. Since the hard disk is not connected by cable, but by a sata connector placed on a subboard (see attached image), I checked whether the USB ports on that subboard were working (yes). I'd say this means that the single flat cable connecting motherboard and subboard is fine.
Tentative conclusion: either something on the motherboard or something on the subboard is damaged (invisibly to my eye so far), perhaps due to static electricity when I was re-assembling the laptop.
I'm not a hardware expert by any means, so I would appreciate it if you could assist me in pinpointing what could be wrong: what to look for, how to continue troubleshooting. Any ideas?
Thank you!
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram