StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Bleh, sorry to keep bringing my laptop woes to the board (though I'm trying not to err by necroing), but I had a guy take a look at it to see just where the problem -- my laptop at random goes off as if depowered, then while random usually won't turn back on for a while, and I sometimes hear a squeaking noise when the lights flash [before going out again] -- might be (since I did believe that it was the hard drive), for which he unscrewed a lid and reseated the outermost RAM chip, causing him to figure that it was loose RAM, maybe from the aftermath of a physical shock (I once dropped my laptop corner-first on my toe by accident), and it did stay on and stable for the next six hours afterwards... only to out of nowhere go off again.

Moreover, having done some more testing today, the "charging" LED now blinks slowly instead of staying on constantly or being off when the battery's fully charged, and while I found that the battery was 92% this morning (), but when the LED blinks, Windows' power meter shows that it's on AC power and the battery being 0%...

P.S. There's no apparent problems with the hard drive, other than one time that CHKDSK ran on a successful boot and partly messed up my Firefox bookmarks (I'd be editting the list at the time of one of the random "go offs".)

What kind of laptop is it?
A lot of MacBooks had random shutdown problems, Apple eventually figured out the problem:

"Essentially the heatsink can expand during use, and comes into contact with the lead from the [thermometer's] sensor cable," reads a more detailed explanation posted at Ogrady's Power Page. "A short circuit results, and the SMC (System Management Controller) pulls the plug. Once the system cools down, the heatsink [recedes] and the contact is broken."

and released a firmware update to improve the internal monitoring system to prevent that. It could be something like that...

I don't know if that (is even possibly) the case on a non-Mac, but I have a HP dv1000 series that's at least a year old, possibly/probably two. Don't think that I can afford to "just" scrap it, as I intend to hand it down eventually.

P.S. That article or problem ever include the "inability to power up and LIKE IT" problem that I described in my OP?