HP laptop, "General system board failure", what next?

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I have an HP Pavilion DM1-3101ea laptop with an integrated AMD E-350 APU. Basically the same as DM1Z, if it is of any help. I have Ubuntu 12.04 on it. The problem appeared as follows: i tried to send it to sleep mode but it didn't work. After a short period of time the fan started spinning up. At this point i turned it off by holding the power button.

I came back to it after a while and, after i turned it on, I was brought to the following state: the fan and HDD spin up, completely blank screen, as in no power goes up to it, not even the LED backlight. The Caps Lock LED flashes 5 times, and the HP blink codes page states that this is "General system board failure". To be noted that they have different codes for CPU, GPU and BIOS failure.

What I have tried:

  • resetting the BIOS by disconnecting the BIOS battery and holding the power button for 30 seconds

  • booting it up with no HDD, WiFi card

  • booting it up with an Ubuntu Live USB stick and external VGA monitor + same & disconnected LVDS cable

  • booting it up with disconnected LVDS cable, no Live USB, no HDD and no WiFi

  • swapping around the RAM modules and slots

What I got was the same blink code.

Any ideas as to what might help?

user310122

Posted 2014-03-24T14:32:36.497

Reputation: 11

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Judging by what it's telling you and what you've done, it sounds like the "system board"/motherboard failed; Replace it.

– Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2014-03-24T14:37:08.127

1If you do have a general board failure I hope you have backups of your system. If not this is likely, once again, another lesson learned on keeping backups. Pull your hard drive and backup to another system, but your board is finished. – Matthew Williams – 2014-03-24T14:38:09.750

Answers

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The only thing you haven't tried is maybe trying a different A/C adapter. I doubt it would make any difference. I'd say you've eliminated everything except the system board.

Replace the system board.

LawrenceC

Posted 2014-03-24T14:32:36.497

Reputation: 63 487

Or the computer - often cheaper than a replacement board, oddly enough. – Ecnerwal – 2014-03-25T00:41:59.110

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Remove everything that you can including HDD and anything in a socket (e.g. wifi cards, modems). Then start testing whether the system boots to bios. Put back the components one by one and test booting.

user555173

Posted 2014-03-24T14:32:36.497

Reputation: 1

It looks like the user has already stated they have tried these steps. – NetworkKingPin – 2016-02-26T06:11:33.480

Asked: 2014-03-24T14:32:36.497

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Active: 2017-12-08T07:44:43.683