Hi,

I am a computer tech and have received a laptop for repair. I noticed when I turned it on the laptop would not do anything for a min or two (the fan would run up and stop, power led would shine and some cd rom activity then stop). It would sit there with a black screen. Suddenly after a random number of minutes (between 1-20mins!) the Acer BIOS screen would display and POST would happen before booting into Windows XP.

It has frozen in XP at various times and pointed towards a CPU fault and over heating. The fan was on its last legs, sounded like a car engine, so I replaced this. Still same issues.

I next replaced the CPU like for like. Same problems. Also applied new thermal paste between the cpu and heatsink, when running the fan kicks in occasionally (not as often as I thought it would) and I left it playing mp3, online radio and updating to service pack 3 and it wouldnt freeze. shutting down ok, cold start, not ok. Waits again before showing the BIOS screen.

The hard disk was also making a screaming noise (SMART test and chkdsk passed) but I also replaced this.

The laptop powers up with and without the battery so dont think its a battery issue.

Running out of ideas and wondered if anyone had any advice.

Thanks