This is a 3-year-old laptop. I never had a big problem with it until now. I updated Kubuntu the night before yesterday. And Firefox got updated to version 18 and a few other related packages got updated. Then I shut down the laptop and restarted it, but it failed to start. I could hear the fan and the hard disk and the optical disk drive initialize. And the power button also lighted up. But there was no video - no POST or BIOS menu.

I even opened the laptop up to the point when only the motherboard was the only thing attached to the base cover. I took it to the technician this evening. He checked it casually, and said that it might be a motherboard problem and will cost quite a bit to fix. Though he was not sure and said that he will give me a call after confirming the problem. Has anyone else had the same problem? What was it and what was the fix?