Gotta put this out to you guys...
My daughters Compaq V3100 (I think that's the model) notebook won't do anything when booting.. the power on light lights up, but there is no sound coming from the hd, the screens stays black and it does nothing. On doing some research she has found the motherboard may have blown! It's only a year old, and since she won it at school last year, she has no warranty p/w. Isn't there an internal power supply that is replaceable? Any other ideas?
Thanks!

Try to find out where the hard drive is located and ensure it is connected. Maybe remove it and plug it back in.

A long shot, but maybe the HD is loose from its connection....

Also find out where the RAM chips are installed and reseat them.

Same long shot, but either of these could result in what you are seeing.

Can you get into the BIOS/setup? (Like pressing the Delete key while booting?)

Well, reseating the ram was one of the tests to do. I haven't done it, but could be a cheap fix, as well as unplugging and re-plugging in the hd... thanks k'dog!

Did you try putting a cd in? A boot disk would be great but any cd at all should make it at least come up and say non-bootable disk

Andyk2, yes... I reseated both ram and hd, turned it on, and heard it trying to access the hd... the whirring sound of the hd spinning was audible, and you can hear what I assume is the armature trying to access it...the telltale 'click-click'. When I put a CD, then a dvd in, the cd drive activated, but no screen at all and no music. Could be a bad hd?

Maybe it is booting up but the screen is defective. Can you hook it up to an external monitor?

yea sounds like the screen to me

Hmm... interesting... I'll give that a try.. lots to do this afternoon, so when I get a chance, I'll let you all know!
Thanks!

Well, just tried that one... no go. It was sending a signal, as the power light on my monitor went from orange to green for a split second on powerup, then back to orange, then again on powerdown... Video card?

We have a pc place up the street that will do a piece by piece diagnostics for $59.00, and that goes towards any repairs they do..
we'll have to wait until she can muster up the $$ and take it to them, I guess! If anyone else has anything I can try, by all means let me know..
Thanks to those that responded!

When the external monitor was hooked up, it may or may not switch automatically to an external monitor.

Try to boot it again with an external monitor connected, and when you think (timewise) the laptop should be booted all the way up then switch to the external monitor manually.

It is usually hold 'Shift' and one of the 'F' Keys with 'screen or display or a littel monitor icon' or something written above it. (I can't recall which one)

Pressing 'shift + the appropriate screen F key usually toggles between internal monitor only, external monitor only, both monitors.

Thanks kenhdog... I wasn't aware of the toggle notion, I figured that since an external device was deployed, it would default to that! I'll give it a shot today and report back!

Kenhdog ought to open an online PC diagnostic service. He and D-Rod have bailed me out more than once.

Something you can try is to remove the battery and power cord from laptop. Then press and hold power button for about 20 sec(guess it drains laptop). Then put the battery back in and attach power cord. Then turn on.

I had a Dell that wouldn't boot and I called support, doubted the instructions but tried it and sure enough, laptop came up

Sorry to say this, but it sounds like when my daughter's laptop went bad last fall. It was a loose connection between the soldered on video card and the motherboard. I guess they went to unleaded solder awhile back and everybody is having problems with laptop boards.

So I did some online research and found out the only way to fix it was to replace the motherboard. Or maybe, just maybe, you could fix it with a heat gun, by resoldering the video card.

I tried the heat gun fix, but wasn't quite careful enough with my tinfoil heatshielding and a plastic sticker on another part of the board shrunk slightly and ripped a few surface mount devices off the board - bummer.

Found a new motherboard on Ebay for $179 and it works now.

well, the shift/fkey didn't work either.
Indy, I'm pretty handy with a soldering iron, but I'm reluctant to tear the back off and try and find the video card.. but thanks for the suggestion. I fixed the keys to my Jeep that way tho! Doggone thing wouldn't unlock or lock the door. Bought a new battery and still no go. Called the local Jeep dealer and he told me about one of the soldering points may have come undone. Sure enough! Easy fix! Good thing too, as the little circuit board runs $150.00!

If you go probing around with an iron, remember the lead free solder melts at around 220 degrees, much hotter then the older solder (183). It does not flow as easily either. You may end up doing more damage then good. The FR4 (fiberglass) melts at only slightly higher then the solder (311) so use caution or you'll lift pads off the board.

Not that kind of solder joint anyway. The video chip has a whole bunch of solder joints on its backside - about a hundred little balls of solder in a grid pattern.

You've got to heat the whole thing up with a heat gun - ever so slowly, then put slight pressure on the chip then cool it down slowly. If you do it exactly right, without messing anything else up, it can fix the problem. My problem was that I left a nearby plastic sticker on the board - covered up with foil just like the instructions said, and when it heated up in shrunk and ripped off about a dozen surface mount components, that were all about the size of large grains of sand. I gave up when I saw that.

More like hundreds of balls or even thousands. I seriously doubt he or any one else who is untrained will have any success in reheating a Ball Grid Array (BGA). They make machines that cost 10s of thousand of dollars to do that and they are less then 100% successful. Those balls are as little as .5mm apart,with pads smaller then a pin head, even being unlevel can cause solder bridges. Most things with BGAs on them are now throw away items unless they are really expensive and that's part of the reason we have lead free solder (thank you europe). To much crap with lead filling landfills. Funny thing is, the parts are not lead free.