Laptop Repairs in Central London (old Compaq Presario)

manveruppd · 13 Jul 2007 at 20:06

My girlfriend's Compaq Presario 2500 is borked and needs repairing. From what she described to me over the phone it sounds like the power cable wasn't making good contact in the socket (one too many people tripped over it over the years so it was wobbly), so when she switched it on something must've sparked inside and caused a short-circuit or something.

Anyway, I don't know how many of its components are toasted and whether any of it is salvageable or if it's completely FUBARed, but I need to take it to somebody who can repair it tomorrow, preferably in the Central London area. Google yielded predictably hundreds of results but I trust the ocuk community more so if anyone on here knows someone who has experience repairing Presarios and has spare parts for them available to hand or who has a PC repair shop themselves, I'd feel more confident than taking it to just anyone. I'd have advised her to send it back to HP, but unfortunately she needs a quick turnaround so that's not an option.

Millwall.FC · 13 Jul 2007 at 20:14

in central london expect to pay over the top £££.

shiner · 13 Jul 2007 at 21:07

These units are notorious for the solder joints failing around socket for the power jack. My 2100 did exactly the same, asked a local shop out in Essex how much and was quoted £90 so I'm going to have a go myself instead.

manveruppd · 13 Jul 2007 at 21:13

Thanks for the warnings to both of you, but at the moment our only concern is that the damage is limited to the solder joint failing... judging from her description of the smoke and smell I'm guessing it took other parts with it, so if £90 is the extent of the damage we'll be very happy!

The only reason I asked for central London was so we wouldn't spend a fortune getting there and back, but if the premium for being in the centre is going to be THAT big I'd be willing to take it somewhere further out.

Come on, so many people on this forum are into IT professionally, SOMEBODY must know someone who can do it!

manveruppd · 14 Jul 2007 at 08:15

bump.

oddjob62 · 14 Jul 2007 at 09:18

manveruppd said:
Come on, so many people on this forum are into IT professionally, SOMEBODY must know someone who can do it!

If you ask one of these "IT professionals" you would usually be.

"Is it under warranty"
"No"
"Buy a new one"

eddie101 · 14 Jul 2007 at 10:05

If you did get smoke, then im sure it would have been more than the power connector. Usually if there was smoke its more than likely one of the power boards on the motherboard which has burnt out. So in other words its FUBAR. We repair laptops where i work and the 'standard' charge is £130, enough people pay it so why bother changing.

Teal · 14 Jul 2007 at 10:19

oddjob62 said:
If you ask one of these "IT professionals" you would usually be.

"Is it under warranty"
"No"
"Buy a new one"

Regrettably a pretty accurate summary.

Personally I'd be inclined to remove the hard drive and check it is still functional so you know first if there is anything worth saving and you get a chance to back up any important data before taking it to be assessed for repair.

manveruppd · 14 Jul 2007 at 11:49

Oh, absolutely I'm taking out the hard disk, even though I haven't really taken apart a laptop before and I'm a bit apprehensive about doing it...

Not sure how I'd go about accessing it though... I assume there are external hard drive enclosures that take laptop (2.5" I assume it is, though I've never opened it) hard drives? I can see some on OcUK's website, but, seeing as I'd need to take care of this today I'll probably have to buy it from some high street computer shop or other, and I'm not quite sure they'd have something this specialised.

The real problem would be accessing the data: I have a replacement laptop for her, but it's an old 475MHz K6 jobbie with only 64MB RAM. It's running Win98 so no chance of it reading her NTFS hard drive. I don't have NT, though I have a copy of Windows 2000 lying about somewhere and maybe I could get that working so she can access her data. Do you think an old K6 would handle 2000? If it won't I'm not completely stuck as I have friends in London whose computers I could use to plug the enclosure in and access the data.

Anyway, I *would* like to take it to be assessed for repair, because it fulfills her needs quite nicely and even if they charged us £150-200 it would be cheaper than a new laptop, and it would be the fastest and most reliable way of getting the contents of her hard drive back. She has online backups of the important stuff but I'm sure there'll be something which she forgot to send herself, plus I *KNOW* it'll be a nightmare managing to get the replacement laptop to connect to the internet - even finding Windows 98 printer drivers for it took me an age and a half, so I'd rather fix her own laptop.

My question therefore still stands: anyone know of some shop in London which could fix this for us, even if it means replacing the motherboard?

K.C. Leblanc · 14 Jul 2007 at 12:51

Win 2k should be fine on a K6 (although if you're using it long term try to find some more ram).

You could also use a Linux live disk to copy stuff off the NTFS drive onto the K6's drive.

manveruppd · 15 Jul 2007 at 21:11

Last bump to ask if anyone knows of a reliable and honest laptop repair shop round here, if not I'm taking it to whoever I find off Google tomorrow.

The Linux live disc stuff sounds interesting, but fortunately I got my hands on a WinXP computer a friend lent us so I can use that to read the laptop's HDD.

Lee · 15 Jul 2007 at 23:40

There is a company called Eurodata in London somewhere. They used to repair and supply components for Compaq/HP kit when I dealt with them. Not sure if they'll do anything for "Joe Public", but worth a try.

If the motherboard is blown, then you may as well bin it !