I have a Lenovo R61i and it runs Windows XP. The right mouse button doesn’t work on it and also, it no longer turns on. It’s powered, but doesn’t turn on. When I did have it on (before I shut it down), I had a mouse plugged in and was able to right click, so I presume there’s a problem with the right mouse button on the laptop itself.
The question is this: If I take it to a shop to have it looked at, I presume they’d ask me for $40 or $60 just to even open it up and take a look at it. Given the two problems that it has, and the model of the laptop and the operating system on it, would the potential cost be enough to fix it as opposed to getting a new one?
The high-end is a motherboard or cpu replacement. Either is going to run you somewhere between $200 and $400. For $500 you can get a faster laptop, but it won’t have that Lenovo build quality to it. That’s the high end though. There is a like a dozen things that could cause the no-start behaviour.
The right-click thing is probably debris, but if it isn’t, it’s a new touchpad is like $30.
Then bump that up to $50~, if it needs a new keyboard. I dismantle my laptop all the time for cleaning 'n stuff. It’s really easy. You should give it a shot before taking it in somewhere. Maybe you’ll get lucky and it’s something obvious like two frayed wires touching. You just download the service manual and follow the directions. It’s as easy as playing with Lego.
First, I’d probably consult an actual computer tech forum.
That is a good message board I frequent for general laptop maintenance.
As far as your booting problem, I’ll need to know a little more.
Do you at least get into the BIOS?
Are there any “chirping,” “ray-gun,” or “grinding” noises coming from your laptop when you attempt to power it on?
Do any lights come on when you hit the power button?
Have you tried moving the power cord around at the connection?
Possible diagnosis:
Absolutely no activity from the laptop could be a problem with the power adapter or an internal component.
Posting to the BIOS (you will usually see the manufacturers logo on a ‘splash screen’ or a series of ‘post tests’ one of which is a memory test) means that the laptops primary hardware is probably alright. But if you hear strange sounds from the laptop it could mean a bad hard drive. In this case hard drive repairs are one of the easiest to do on a laptop and also the most common (the hard drive is the only component with moving parts).
Bad sectors are another common problem which indicate a drive is going to die. Though they are common to have with a good hard drive(not so much for modern drives), if bad sectors are preventing you from booting that is not a good sign. Typical recommendation is to get a new hard drive. There are programs like SpinRite which attempt to salvage the old hard drive for continued use, but keep in mind it will eventually die anyway. My suggestion would be to replace the hard drive and then use an adapter to connect your laptop’s hard drive to the USB port of a working computer. Then you can use software like Unstoppable Copier to recover some of the data).
Alternatively it could have been a virus or software glitch that damaged your master boot record and requires you to either run the Windows Recovery program (on your Winows Installation Disk) or completely reinstall Windows (which will probably erase data - unless you keep your crucial data on another partition of the hard drive).
Nope. Nothing. You hit the power button and it does nothing. There is no sound. It’s almost like there’s some physical connection the button isn’t making, or it’s just simply dead.
When the same thing happened to my R61i (now retired due to a dead screen), they needed to replace the whole keyboard. It might have just been the power button but, with the way the R61is are built, you gotta replace more than that.
Well, poop. That’s a fairly common problem with Lenovo laptops, and that’s never failed to work for me. The only other easy step to try is a different power adapter and hope that’s where the problem is, Otherwise, what you’re looking at is a disconnect somewhere in the internal power system, and it’s probably only a $4 widget. Trouble is, finding the exact widget that failed is going to be time-consuming, and thus costly. Given the age (you said it runs XP, right?) and the other issues, I doubt it’s going to be cost-effective to repair. Ebay tells me that used ones in working order can be had for well under $200.
FMV is probably about $200 so anything more than a keyboard/mouse is not going to be a cost effective repair. Since we are talking bare minimum a 4 y/o laptop, best bet probably leans more toward replacement.