A few days ago she decided that she was going to see about fixing it. She asked me take her to Goodwill's Computer Works so she could look at what they had. Her idea was to get some cheap parts just to see what she could do. We went down and she looked at used cases, monitors, and various other items. After looking at things and getting ideas we went back home and rested.
No actually we went home to see if the laptop still worked. First we attached an RGB cable to the laptop and then connected it to the TV. This way we bypassed her laptop screen and we would be able to see if the laptop at least still worked. Julie turned on the computer and the display on the TV screen came on. And then went off.
Hmmmm!
She turned it on again and got into the setup screen. Now she tried to get XP to boot. It started to boot and then promptly stopped.
Hmmmm!
Now she turned the computer on a third time and had the computer to boot to it's most recent back up.
SUCCESS!!! The laptop works and has a 42" screen no less. Looks good.
Yesterday Julie started making plans to buy a monitor so she can use her laptop in her room. Enter Scott, her brother. He just happened to have a monitor laying around his house collecting dust. Seriously! He brought it over for her so all she needed were a set of RGB cables. We headed to Computer Works and picked up a set for $2.00 and also picked up some speakers for $4.00.
Not bad. Instead of spending a few hundred on a new laptop Julie got hers up and running for under $10.
You can't beat that with a stick; and if you do...YOU'RE GOING TO FIX IT.
© 2008 Barry T Horst
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
