Laptop Issues? Stick it in the freezer.

This was an old Pavilion dv2000 series laptop running Windows XP.

Reported symptom was the very common blue-screen-of-death failed-boot infinite rebooting loop.

Solution was to run the XP Recovery Console using an XP disk to restore core windows files. During the recovery, the computer shut itself off randomly. On repeat, this happened again even sooner. Touching the bottom of the laptop revealed that this was due to severe overheating triggering the protective thermistors.

Eric then mentioned that the cooling fan never seems to run as loud.

I took it home and tried to run a complete XP recovery console by keeping the laptop very cool (in the fridge, ha!)... The recovery completed, but still no boot. Suspecting a corrupted hard drive, I decided it was important to try and copy all of Nicoles files right away.

I removed the hard drive from the laptop, connected it to my desktop PC using a SATA-to-USB cable, and I found that the hard drive was indeed corrupted. It still had RAW data on it, but it did not have a catalog and did not know whether it was FAT or NFTS or etc...

Nicole's thousands of pictures and music files should have been lost forever, but thanks to a terriffic hard disk recovery program called "GetDataBack", there was hope. After a scan which took my computer half a day it was able to reassemble the RAW data as NFTS and remarkably I found every single file that was in Nicole's MyDocuments (some 26 gigabytes). This was all copied over to my Desktop sucessfully.

I was ready to wipe the old laptop hard drive completely clean when I discovered a partion on the hard drive that was for HP recovery and still intact.. I was able to put the hard drive back in the laptop, go to this HP Recovery console, and let it not only reformat the hard drive but also install every single program and setting that HP had setup as factory defaults. So rather than having done a wipe and then a barebones XP install, I was able to restore the PC as if it was brand new again, complete with bundled software and the Media Center edition of XP. By the way, I had to put the laptop in the fridge quite frequently to do this! Ha.

Determined to address the overheating problem, I learned via google that this model is poorly designed for heat management and there are many complaints. However, it seemed everyone was complaining that their fan was blowing loud constantly to counteract the high heat. On Nicoles laptop the fan was barely running at all, even when the laptop was boiling hot.

There were no settings in the BIOS for fan management. And unlike Vista and Windows 7, there are no settings in the windows power control panel. I installed a program called SpeedFan watch shows you all temperatures in your PC and sometimes allows you to control fans, but in this case I could only see temperatures. I did see that the second AMD processor was 115 degress celsius! Every where else the PC was 60-80 degrees.

I did an upgrade to the AMD processor drivers, and I also flashed the BIOS to the latest version. But still no go... the fan was stiil very weak.

Finally I decided to tear the laptop apart and perform surgery (using the HP dv2000 disassembly guide found online). The fan/heat were burried under tons of components, and when I finally got to it, I made sure the fan blades were completely mobile and unrestricted by lint/hairballs. I also blew compressed air at every angle.

The most significant thing I found was that the electrical contracts for the fan's power were covered in thick layers of dust. I cleaned up the contacts and reconnected.

Upon reassembly, I found that the fan was now running strong! And at variable speeds. Using SpeedFan, I saw the temperatures had decreased (althogh still on the high-end). I ran an intensive CPU test by going to Hulu.com and the fan kicked into extra gear. The temperatures never approached the thermal limit and the laptop never shut down.

After bring Windows XP up to date with all updates, upgrading Internet Explorer, instally Java, Flash, iTunes, and Microsoft Security Essentials, I have since recopied Nicoles 26 gigs back to her MyDocuments, and will deliver today.

As a bonus, the power supply cord they were using was terrible. It had a distinct hiss when connected and didn't maintain good contract unless you wedged something under it. I suspect this wasn't the correct voltage and may have damaged the hard drive. A replacement was ordered at 10 dollars cost.

A successful surgery. Tech Ninjas attack! That was fun. Glory to God that I might be used.