[peasant]

I have been toying with the idea of building a computer for some time but not yet done anything towards this end other than thinking, un/fortuitously another option came as a shock to me this morning.

The problem.


Asus aspire one oao 150BB, netbook, 1GB ram, 120GB hdd. DEAD.

With or without the battery in but plugged into the mains supply the hdd sounds and feels like its spinning via slight audiable noise and very slight vibration however the hdd light does come on, the screen stays black, on powering off the screen flashes for a millisecond then obviously the computer is off.

With the battery in but no mains supply connected the hdd does not appear to spin, same sympton no hdd light and again the screen stays black but flashes on power off.

This would be an obvious chance for me to experiment on repairing a computer, however I have no experience of building a computer let alone repairing one. Having never seen the insides of a computer before I wouldn't know which parts were which.

I have read the stickies on the subject of a dead computer but all of them seem to assume an already working knowledge of the internals of a computer.

I wish to proceed with trying to repair this Asus, if someone could or would take the time to walk me through this step by step, accepting my total ignorance for what it is, and acknowledging that if I ask a completely obvious question it is not done so facetiously, I would indeed be grateful to anyone who could share some of their knowledge with me.

[Carbon]

There is nothing cost effective or straightforward about repairing a laptop, much less a netbook, you will void your warranty, and you will learn very little that could not be learned either reading about components or picking apart and rebuilding a very old computer from a thrift store. Trying to narrow down selective faults like this on laptops is near impossible even for an advanced user.

Send it for repair by Asus. If you want experience, do the above or just buy the parts and you'll learn as you go.

[4D(Fordy(Ford) Ollie]

Yeah, as Carbon says laptops really isn't the place to start.

Personally, I wouldn't want to try and fix or build a laptop, they tend to have a lot more "onboard" than a Desktop PC which means you can't really just swap one component and everythings working.

I would advise that you instead treat the two routes as completely seperate ordeals.

So, obviously get your Asus sorted under warranty, don't want it going to waste.

And then either build a computer that's so cheap and outdated that it literally is just to learn about what's involved.

Or bite the bullet and build a PC to suit you're needs (a desktop though, not laptop)

There are plenty of users on this site that will be more than happy to help you out along the way.

If you do choose that option Carbon also has a thread on choosing the best components for you're needs and budget, which is slightly more gamer orientated, but if you go for one of the more budget options it won't actually make much difference.

[peasant]

I thank you both for your replies, I've discovered that Asus have a reliability issue in general, seems to me that all supliers/makers do at some point or other but I have some bad reports about Asus in particular. Depends what you search for I guess.

I guess returning it Asus for repair is probably best, seems like I'll put building my own on hold until one of the other two pc's packs in.

Shame though, I was rather fancying having a crack at repairing it myself, still let's not run before we can walk.

[4D(Fordy(Ford) Ollie]

You could always hop on the Yahoo Group of Freecycle, where you can get things for free, and advertise your own things for free.

Here I'll bet you could easily put together a computer out of old parts that are compatible with each other.

It wouldn't be anywhere near state of the art or anything you'd enjoy using, but you'd get the practice in and of course it'd be completely free.

Hey who know you may even be able to sell it for a few bob when it's working profitable learning.

[peasant]

I apologise for misleading anyone, it is of course an Acer netbook I have, not an Asus, although I do believe they are closely related.