Dead Laptop..

[Jrod]

My laptop (Toshiba Satellite 1905-S301) recently stopped turning on. Well, sometimes it would turn on for a few seconds but not long enough to even start up. So, I took it to a friend of a friend who works for CircuitCity's tech dept and he said that the harddrive and/or motherboard probably died, and that it'd cost around $650 to have them fix it.

How difficult would it be to swap out those parts on a laptop myself? How much would it cost? Either I fix it myself, or I toss it and get a new one which I can't afford at this time. If anybody here has experience with laptops and could help me out I'd appreciate it!

 

[Ronnie]

the hdd is easy to replace but if its the motherboard it will be a little trickier and more expensive

dont let circuit city fix it thats alot of money and you could do it yourself for alot cheaper

 

[Jrod]

Yeah, having them fix it for almost 700 bucks isn't even an option haha. I'm just wondering how much a mobo would cost for it and how hard it'd be to install.

 

[Jrod]

After leaving it off for a few days I tried it again and it got passed the boot-up this time. Opened a program and it shut off. Any ideas?

 

[Jorsoft]

Here's a link to your laptop's parts. Toshiba often doesn't make their laptop mobos available to anyone but themselves, and unfortunately that seems to be the case here.
http://www.impactcomputers.com/toshiba-satellite-1905-s301-parts.html

That said, Toshibas are very difficult to service. Instructions are often not available for how to do anything beyond replacing ram or a hd. Your model fo laptop is running around $400-450 used so it's not worth it to fix it. I'd just part it all out on ebay, you should be able to earn a couple hundred bucks and put it towards a new laptop.

 

[Jrod]

I went ahead and bought a $50 hd for it...but now I'm kind of doubting that's the problem. After doing some research seems like Toshiba laptops have a lot of problems with motherboards and overheating. We'll see. I can always sell it if it doesn't help. Would I get more selling the parts separate you think?