Which HP laptop is better for a college student?

My HP dv7 1127cl laptop does not boot up.?

• About a year ago I had to send in my laptop to HP so they can replace my graphics card cause it wouldn't boot and I was receiving the error code which is the NUM and CAPS lock lights would flash 4 times in an interval. Now I am experiencing a similar problem and of course outside my warranty. A week ago I purchased some canned air because my laptop was over heating and getting uncomfortable to use. I was blowing the air in the out-take vent of my heat sink fan and aiming through the in-take to blow out all the dust. As soon as I was done I turned on my laptop and it booted up fine and was running fine for about 5 mins then as soon as I would open my firefox/iTunes it would shut off as if the battery died. I kept trying to turn it on and kept getting the same results. The weird thing is that this time my computer has only given me the error code twice out of 20 tries. I am suspecting (and hoping) that it isn't my graphics card that is causing this but my RAM because I am running an ATI Radeon HD 3200 with shared memory so it is tied into my RAM and partially running off of it. I am running a 2 x 2GB (unknown manufacture) RAM set up and generally my Firefox runs at 150,000K to 200,000K and my iTunes running at 180,000K (I have approx 130GB of music/movies) so I always have my laptop set to High Performance to reduce the lag. Is there a chance I have just put too much stress on my laptop over the past 2yrs that I fried my RAM? I tried running the laptop with one stick in at a time and had slightly better performance from one of them than the other. It was running decently well with having FireFox open but my laptop shut off after I tried to stream a song. I have looked up some possible replacements for my RAM and plan on expanding to 8GB if I end up replacing it. If it isn't my RAM and is actually my graphics card, where can I find the cheapest replacement(s) for it? Also is it integrated into the motherboard and would I need to replace that as well? Specs: 64 bit Vista Home 2.1GHz AMD Turion x2 (Dual-Core) 2 x 2 DDR2 200 pin PC2 6400 ATI Radeon HD 3200 (with shared memory) 320GB HD I would greatly appreciate any links to replacement parts/instructions. I plan on either having myself or a friend do the repairs and I am trying to eliminate all possibilities before I spend $400 HPs direct replacement parts (that is my last resort). The beauty of being a broke college student. Also, can I just add how much I despise AMD computers? I have always had problems with them. Defiantly making sure its Intel next time because my parents Pentium III is still going without a lick of a problem.

• Answer:

  You have to solve this problem by the process of elimination. Based on the symptoms, I would say either your cpu is overheating, or the gpu (graphics card) is overheating causing the computer to shut off to preserve itself. This is a common safety feature. Find a geeky friend that has worked on laptops and open that thing up. The service manual for the laptop is probably available online. Search for it. Once you open it, you can remove the heatsink/fan and clean the cpu die with some rubbing alcohol and reapply thermal compound like arctic silver that will conduct heat a bit better than the thermal grease it came with from the factory. Clean any dust out of the cpu fan/heatsink with a air spray can. Do the same with the graphics card if possible. If you really think it's the ram, you can test it by running a program called memtest. Download it, burn it to a disk, and boot from it. You cannot replace a graphics card as it is soldered to the motherboard. You can, however, replace the whole motherboard. It can be expensive.