Its been a hefty and powerful workhorse for near 4 years but to my dismay three months ago my trusty Sager D900k coughed its last 
I've sent it to various repair-shops to no avail.
The first cleaned the ducts out and diagnosed a motherboard problem caused by heat (my neglect to dismantle and clean the insides which would have voided its recently depleted warranty
, but they could only repair mainstream company laptops.
The second company (www.clevoweb.co.uk) got farthest in their diagnosis and stated that all components were fine accept the vid-card (Gforce Go 7800GTX). They had the system for two months, supposedly waiting for parts to come in for testing
until I put my foot down, then they ordered a card in from the US, but today I found out that apparently the card from overseas was faulty so they in fact couldn't test it. I have no choice but to take their word for it.
I gather parts are becoming rare (UK), especially the graphics cards. The engineer told me it would be £400-£600 for a replacement card shipped to them direct from Clevo (Are they serious!?). I agreed with him that it was a waste of time, as I could almost get a new system for that!
So due to the poor economics of that situation its not being repaired and the engineer is sending it back to me. I'd rather replace the system and sell the parts to recoup some of the cash, but maybe before I completely give up I could try a bit of forum help.
PROBLEM-
My backup hard drive failed (unrelated technically), then to my wonderful luck the laptop died 24 hours later A whole year of uni work down the sink, Only DVD backups from now on I'm telling you!
Firstly the laptop completely froze in WinXP-pro without a warning or a BSOD, which was rare but not unheard of.
I had to hard-power off, as nothing responded.
When I powered it on again it became stuck in a reboot-cycle every three or so seconds. the screen would remain black, or alternatively completely white, which I have never seen before.
By unplugging and re-plugging from the mains I got it into windows once or twice (enough to back up a lost university architectural-thesis!)
After that lucky backup it no longer booted, and remained in its insane little reboot loop.
<<< just like that, but less funny...
I tried boot-disks, boot-cd's to no avail.
The CD player facility works without booting.
After that I sent it away to those two repair-shops.
So I'm at square one again, but with an idea that it may be the graphics card at fault if clevoweb are right.
So my dilemma is...
1) Is it really the graphics card? Its hard to know, but its a hot card so as it was dusty inside I wouldn't be surprised.
2) where, oh where does one find a compatible graphics card for a D900k? the only geforce 7800gtx go card's in the UK on e-bay appear to be dell versions of the cards. According to Clevoweb they wouldn't fit, which is a shame.
3) If I obtained a replacement, how easy is it to pull it apart? I had a look before and its rather more tricky than dismantling with a desktop!
4) Is there a reliable repair-shop that could cope with a D900k and actually get it working without keeping me in limbo for 2-months with a whole trail of spurious excuses and only to then quote £400-600 for a graphics card replacment? ARGH!
---
Well, nearly 4 years of constant use isn't bad, and its done some nice renders and one hell of a lot of heavy graphics and CAD.
thanks for any help!
I've sent it to various repair-shops to no avail.
The first cleaned the ducts out and diagnosed a motherboard problem caused by heat (my neglect to dismantle and clean the insides which would have voided its recently depleted warranty
, but they could only repair mainstream company laptops.The second company (www.clevoweb.co.uk) got farthest in their diagnosis and stated that all components were fine accept the vid-card (Gforce Go 7800GTX). They had the system for two months, supposedly waiting for parts to come in for testing
until I put my foot down, then they ordered a card in from the US, but today I found out that apparently the card from overseas was faulty so they in fact couldn't test it. I have no choice but to take their word for it.I gather parts are becoming rare (UK), especially the graphics cards. The engineer told me it would be £400-£600 for a replacement card shipped to them direct from Clevo (Are they serious!?). I agreed with him that it was a waste of time, as I could almost get a new system for that!
So due to the poor economics of that situation its not being repaired and the engineer is sending it back to me. I'd rather replace the system and sell the parts to recoup some of the cash, but maybe before I completely give up I could try a bit of forum help.
PROBLEM-
My backup hard drive failed (unrelated technically), then to my wonderful luck the laptop died 24 hours later
A whole year of uni work down the sink, Only DVD backups from now on I'm telling you!Firstly the laptop completely froze in WinXP-pro without a warning or a BSOD, which was rare but not unheard of.
I had to hard-power off, as nothing responded.
When I powered it on again it became stuck in a reboot-cycle every three or so seconds. the screen would remain black, or alternatively completely white, which I have never seen before.
By unplugging and re-plugging from the mains I got it into windows once or twice (enough to back up a lost university architectural-thesis!)
After that lucky backup it no longer booted, and remained in its insane little reboot loop.
<<< just like that, but less funny...I tried boot-disks, boot-cd's to no avail.
The CD player facility works without booting.
After that I sent it away to those two repair-shops.
So I'm at square one again, but with an idea that it may be the graphics card at fault if clevoweb are right.
So my dilemma is...
1) Is it really the graphics card? Its hard to know, but its a hot card so as it was dusty inside I wouldn't be surprised.
2) where, oh where does one find a compatible graphics card for a D900k? the only geforce 7800gtx go card's in the UK on e-bay appear to be dell versions of the cards. According to Clevoweb they wouldn't fit, which is a shame.
3) If I obtained a replacement, how easy is it to pull it apart? I had a look before and its rather more tricky than dismantling with a desktop!
4) Is there a reliable repair-shop that could cope with a D900k and actually get it working without keeping me in limbo for 2-months with a whole trail of spurious excuses and only to then quote £400-600 for a graphics card replacment? ARGH!
---
Well, nearly 4 years of constant use isn't bad, and its done some nice renders and one hell of a lot of heavy graphics and CAD.
thanks for any help!
