head Scratcher?

[Spinning Hat]

Ive got a friend who has a no-name "custom" laptop, and a couple weeks ago, his Cingular card quit working. He's had that tested, and it checks out fine. His Ethernet port will not allow him to connect to any network. While booting the machine, I saw this error message during POST:

PCI ERROR: Error During Memory Configuration Routine: Card Disabled.

The BIOS doesn't pause or beep or anything, and then it boots into Windows normally. It's obvious the PC Slot is disabled by the lack of any power going to the card, but why the Ethernet too?

My friend told me that when he was rushed off to surgery, his dog may have peed on his notebook due to the stress of being locked in his truck. (He's an OTR Driver.) I know this could very well be the culprit, but could there be some IRQ issues, or something entirely different wrong?

[XMEN Ashaman DTM]

Usually, the controller for ethernet is on the outside edge of one of the motherboards in the laptop. It's quite probable that the area of the board that the ethernet controller chip sits on is also near the card slot interface. It only takes one component to pop to cause the kind of problem you are describing.

[Spinning Hat]

G..R..E..A..T..... I'm not about to go digging through the case to find what popped in there... The enclosure is a Lite-On model, not sure about the rest of the components... Maye it's time he gets a new notebook, no?

[XMEN Ashaman DTM]

Then again, if it's an obvious component.... he might get away with replacing it.

Though that's a tough one because of the damned proprietary nature of those boards.

(My personal belief is that the notebook market won't expand without the same/similar customization of components that the PC market enjoys.)

[Spinning Hat]

I agree with you. I'd love to be able to build my own notebook, but it's next to impossible. And Expensive.