Gateway 400SD4 Lockups.

I know what you're thinking...format, right? WRONG! Already formatted. This is all hardware.

I traded in my RAdeon 9700 pro for this nice Gateway 400SD4 laptop, but I see now why I got it for such a good deal. It locks up/doesnt boot/freezes and whatnot with complete RANDOMNESS. There is no rythim to the way it does.

What it does...

If it freezes, everything stays on the screen, and nothing movies. Power button has to be held for 7 seconds to power off, and usually will not restart. When I hit the power button again, everything powers up, but nothing happens. Screen is the only thing that doesnt power up, but it tries to (you see a VERY dim blink). All fans come on, and the processor puts down ALOT of heat. If you turn the thing on and off ALOT of times, it will eventually come back on.

Sometimes windows will give me a blue screen of death.

Sometimes I will just not turn on at all, like what it does before, but I wasnt using it for a few hours, it just feels like it doesnt want to turn on.

Then sometimes it is so stable, I can do anything I want to do on it and it doesnt flinch.

I was told that a capacitor behind the internal power supply goes out and I have to have this replaced.

Does anyone have any information on this? What causes this? Is it really this supposed capacitor?

Sometimes when it doesnt want to boot right off, the battery light will blink red.

Is it possible for me to do this myself?

If I remove the mobo and take it somewhere, can I have them install a new capacitor?

Where could I take it to have something like that done?

Would it be cheaper to get a new mobo? (400 bucks for NEW mobo)

Do you want to buy a nice laptop that could use some TLC?

Thx for the help in advance -- KLowD9x

Overheating is the likely cause. Especially if it's completely stable sometimes.

RJARRRPCGP said:

Overheating is the likely cause. Especially if it's completely stable sometimes.

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I was wondering about that, but when I get into windows, it stays right around 55 degrees (peaks at 70. and when it is stable, it will run 3dmark over and over and over and over and over and never give me a problem.) the fans come on at the first fan comes on at 65, second one at 68, and they go full blast at 70. So, im not sure if its overheating becuase I have yet to see it go over 70. It does need some thermal compound though. Also, this is the dekstop P4, doesnt it have some kind of heat control where it sends hault commands to slow the thing down to keep it cool?

I have a mobile P4 in my lappy. While yes the intels do downclock, other things could be heating up. When I am playing something like GTA and the heating vents are somewhat blocked, it will eventualyl shut off (when it is VERY hot). This could be happenign as well, but if it is freezing, I don't know if it is an overheating problem or not.

What might be an issue is the service pack or some windows update thing. What I wojuld recomedn is try a different windows, for 1. If you are using Windows XP SP2, try SP1. If you are using SP1, try SP2 of course. IF you have it kicking around, throw windows 2000 on it. Hell, download knoppix and play around with it for a while (and try to recreate the freezing process).

A question though. you said it's a desktop P4? Do you mean its a Mobile P4? (not a Pentium M or something like that). If it is not a mobile, it might not like changing the multis and stuff up and down all the time (i've seen replaced CPUs in laptops freeze when the mobo downclocks to cool them down and save power since the mobo dose it too fast for the CPUs liking).

Cheator said:

I have a mobile P4 in my lappy. While yes the intels do downclock, other things could be heating up. When I am playing something like GTA and the heating vents are somewhat blocked, it will eventualyl shut off (when it is VERY hot). This could be happenign as well, but if it is freezing, I don't know if it is an overheating problem or not.

What might be an issue is the service pack or some windows update thing. What I wojuld recomedn is try a different windows, for 1. If you are using Windows XP SP2, try SP1. If you are using SP1, try SP2 of course. IF you have it kicking around, throw windows 2000 on it. Hell, download knoppix and play around with it for a while (and try to recreate the freezing process).

A question though. you said it's a desktop P4? Do you mean its a Mobile P4? (not a Pentium M or something like that). If it is not a mobile, it might not like changing the multis and stuff up and down all the time (i've seen replaced CPUs in laptops freeze when the mobo downclocks to cool them down and save power since the mobo dose it too fast for the CPUs liking).

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It does it even when in the BIOS so I know its not my OS's.

Well, its not a desktop P4, its still micro PGA, but its not the Pentium M processor. It gets horrid battery life, but I dont care, I just want it to be able to sit in my car and do some stuff on the inernet while im out.

I finally dug up some old compy parts and got my dekstop running again (old HS and TNT2 put together!, lol) so I will be using this while I take the lappy appart and checking out that damn cap. Does anyone know how to test a cap?

No i don't know how to test a acp.

Ah, so you have the same kind of lappy i do. Desktop replacement. Well if thats the case, then what about getting the newest bios?

Cheator said:

No i don't know how to test a acp.

Ah, so you have the same kind of lappy i do. Desktop replacement. Well if thats the case, then what about getting the newest bios?

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becuase now it wont even turn on, lolololol

I was wondering...what if I just scraped that damn thing off of the board. I mean...it is JUST a cap. Its part of the power supply...there are a million other caps in this system to cancel out that noise that might come from the PSU.

Bump on this becuase I got NO BOOT now. Nothing. It will not boot. It turns on and sits there and blows out hot air.

How hard would it be to desolder and solder on a new cap?

How much would it cost to get someone else to do it?

How hard would it be to get this little surface mount cap?

Would it be possible to go to a higher voltage and farad rating to prevent something like this from happening again? Or is it used (I never took a class on AC) to generate an opposite frequency to cancel out any AC frequencys that might be comming into the laptop (I forgot exactly what it was called, had something to do with resonance.)