I have a Compaq 12XL125 Laptop Computer which will start, very
occasionally and run for a few minutes and quit. Here is what has
been done to the computer. It seemed to work fine before any
upgrades, however, the problem may and probably was there. previously.

I just installed a different hard drive in this computer. It had a
bad 6 GB in it and I replaced it with a 20 GB. Both are Hitachi HD's.
I got it all formatted, all the drivers downloaded and installed (of
course it didn't have the recovery CD with it) I got all the drivers
needed from the Hpac site. though, so no problems there. Anyway, I
had just finished up setting the video settings, for the new drivers
and it was working fine. Everything had been done.. I had even been
online with the modem, installed AVG anti virus and installed IE
5.5 (which obviously was a necessity!) I had set the notebook aside
to do some work with my desktop and just let it run for a
while and more or less see that there weren't any bugs or anything I
had forgotten to do.


It had it running, with the AC power adaptor (which is the way I was
using it during the entire repair, with the battery installed, also.
(I probably had this thing on and off at lest 25 different times
during the entire repair and loading of all software and never a
problem.) It ran for, I'm guessing, about 20 minutes or so and all of
a sudden it just went dead. No indication of any problem, on the
screen, that I noticed. I tried to reboot it, but, I noticed that the
only light I was seeing on, was the AC power light. The Battery light
nor the Computer ON light, when I tried to restart it, were lit. I
messed with it and finally gave up for the night. The next day, I
started to try a few different things (cleared the charged capacitors
by holding down the power button, down/off, etc) I finally got it to
come back on as normal. Again, it worked for about 15 - 20 minutes
and back to the same state again. Basically, dead as far as computer
operation goes with only the AC power light showing any indication.


I have done a lot of work with Desktop systems and have been an
electronic technician most of my life, semi-retiring back in 2001. I
am fully able to handle any type of repair, but, i will admit that my
experience and knowledge with notebook computers, is limited, at best.
I was hoping someone may have run across this problem, previously, and
could maybe guide me in the proper direction as to the possible
problem and even suggest some remedy. (A new mother board, if even
available any longer, would be out of the question because of the
cost and I fear buying another off of eBay or something would likely
result in the same problem, sooner or later.) If there is anything,
soldering connections, etc. that could possibly be the problem and
someone is aware of it, I would sincerely appreciate any help.

Contact me with a reply to this post or send an email to


Thank you,

John