Hello,

My dad's friend's laptop has died and he brought it to me to see if I could get it to work, but I'm stumped. It's a Gateway 7330GZ, and is out of warranty. Tonight I took it apart to see if anything was broken, but everything inside looks fine. (No burn marks/signs of a short anywhere, nor has any type of liquid inside) The only thing that I didn't totally look at is processor.

Now, this is what is happening. When we hit the power on button, the fans go on, and then nothing happens. Now, after I took it apart, and put it back together, I can get it to startup and post, but then after that, it just goes black. Managed to get into the bios once, but then it just suddenly went black. (All the fans shutoff to, but the lights are still on like normal.) If I hit it, it will usually POST and stay on for 2-3 seconds before it just shuts off.

Any ideas/suggestions?
Thanks in advance,
-Ello

Sounds like a motherboard issue to me....sadly, not something you can simply swap out and check with an older laptop.