Odd Laptop problem

I have an NEC laptop that will only work if you apply a good amount of pressure in the middle (just above and below the keyboard.) I have re-installed the hard drive thinking that a connection might be loose.

Does anyone know what could be causing this problem?

 

Need more definition of not work. Will it not power up? Will it power up? Will the bios load? Does everything until it tries to read the harddrive?

 

It gets power, but it can't get the display to work and the hard drive does not spin unless I press down on it. Once I let up the pressure, everthying on the screen freezes.

The odd thing is that I can even get it to load Windows and run programs if I am applying pressure.

 

Thanks, I'll give that a try when I'm at work.

 

So it powers on, may or may not load the bios.

I'd say that there is a power connection loose or a short. The power is getting to the power switch but it doesn't appear to be getting to the motherboard. If it were then the display would at least work and you could see the bios load.

When you press down you make the connection.

Of course you said when you let up the screen freezes. Does it freeze or go blank?

 

While it's booting, the screen will go blank, once windows loads, the screen just freezes. If I press down again, it starts working like normal again.

 

sounds like a good paper weight will fix that problem.

 

I almost went to Home Depot to get a vice.

 

I thought of that also. Sounds to me like you have good lap top to tear up and try to fix.

 

Now that does sound freaky.

Still sounds like a bad connection, obviously. Boot it, put the mouse over a program icon. Stop pressing down and double click the mouse (touch pad, etc). Since the screen is frozen you won't see any results but give it about fifteen seconds then push down again. Windows will make a call to the hard drive which should fail. This should cause the screen to go blank, if not when you reapply the pressure the screen might immediately update. If it does then I'd say you have a video card problem. It could be the connection to the screen or a power problem. Take it out and reseat it.

It likely I could be wrong. Just trying to think it through. I'm not a computer repair person.