Dropped laptop takes 3-10 attempts to post. Dying board?

[BadPeteNo]

A fiend asked me to take a look at his laptop and see if I could bring it back to life. It shows signs of being dropped hard, but he was on vacation and couldn't confirm it. Shortly before he left, he asked me to give it a tune up, so I know it was in working order about 6 weeks ago.

It's a Compaq Presario F732NR.
1.8GHz Athlon X2, 1GB DDR2, began life with Vista, 160GB HDD (now dead).

First off, the HDD is totally dead. It does the 'buzz..... click! buzz..... click!' of death and won't show up in bios or any OS on my main rig. I'm currently attempting to install win 7 on one of my drives to see if it works. Even if it does, I think this laptop might be fragged anyway.

When powered on, it lights up, fans an optical drive behave normally, but there's no display. This is the same if plugged into an external display. If left alone, it will kick off and try to restart. Eventually, it will post. Attempting manually takes anywhere from 3 to 10 attempts to get a post.

It took about 10 tries to get it to boot ubuntu from CD. Once it did, it worked just fine. In fact, it's worked 4 out of 5 since. The Win 7 DVD started up just fine as well (after I got it to post). The installer crashed while I was posting this, but I've seen it do that a lot on laptops that did eventually cooperate.

Once it's loaded an os, it's fine. Also passed memtest86 for about an hour.

QUESTION:
Lets assume that I can get it to take an install. If it takes half a dozen attempts to post, this could mean the board is dying. Is it worth even buying him a new drive? I don't have any spares I can give up, and I don't want him to drop $40-$50 on a laptop that's half-dead and on its way down.

Thanks.

 

[ingtar33]

sounds like something was knocked loose, or a weld was broken... mbs don't usually die like that.

that said, not sure what you can do... If it was mine, i'd strip it down, bake the mb in the oven, reassemble, and see if it works. but that's what i'd do to mine. In a last ditch attempt to salvage it.

 

[USAFRet]

Could be something got jarred loose in the drop. Sometimes a connection, sometimes not.

 

[BadPeteNo]

If it was mine, i'd strip it down, bake the mb in the oven, reassemble, and see if it works.

I've fixed a video card that way before. I agree. You have just as much of a chance to kill it as you do to save it.

What I don't get is why it will eventually post and that it's fine once it does. I'm most of the way done with the windows install that seems to be taking correctly.

Lets pretend this works. Is there reason to believe this problem will get worse and worse, or do you guys think it's going to just continue as is?

 

[ingtar33]

i suspect the problem is in the psu... you might want to test that out somehow... though laptops can be funny about that.