lkswan

Last year I spilled coffee on the screen of my IPAQ hx2415. It would come on, start to reset and begin with where you use the stylus to go through the calibrating procedure, but would not respond to the stylus. I sent it to elaptoprepair(.com) and they said it needed a new motherboard for $150.00. Since I could buy a good used IPAQ for that price on e-bay, I told them to just send it back to me. (Don't use this company-they charged more than they said they would before they'd send it back, but that's another story.) I got it back 2 months later and one day I just tried to turn it on. It came on, the screen lit up, but just a blank screen (I tried soft reset, hard reset, all of that). It was right by my laptop and I noticed that my laptop was telling me another computer was nearby, detected by the infrafred. It was the IPAQ, but it was named "WM_Joe" (not my name) and it started to sync. I was able to explore it through Activesync and everything was there - Windows, files, a lot of stuff, except that the stuff wasn't mine - really weird. It even had a file there with Joe's bank account numbers and passwords - a lot of personal stuff. I called elaptoprepair and asked how in the world this happened. They said they had just run a "diagnostic" on it and didn't know how it could happen. I contacted Joe and he said he had sent his IPAQ in to the same place to have the Wi-Fi fixed and he did get it back. I told him I had destroyed all of his personal bank and password files, but it was scary because if it had gone to someone less honest they could have had a field day with all of that. I know that this is my IPAQ and they didn't get it mixed up because of certain marks on the case that were there. ANYWAY, I don't understand how the motherboard can need replacing when it appears to be there when connected to my laptop. MY DILEMMA is this: I am willing to spend the $35.00 or so that I can get a screen assembly replacement for on e-bay, but that's all it would be worth spending, but I don't know if it IS the screen. By the way, it appears to have been thoroughly cleaned too - I saw no evidence of coffee on it (?). Can anyone out there tell if this sounds like it needs the screen replaced? Or can the motherboard be shot even though I can get into it via ActiveSync and everything looks normal? This just doesn't make sense to me... HELP? Thanks! (Sorry for the length of this post - I tried to keep it as short as possible.)

Raymond_Tengen

If it works fine, then keep using it. If I were in your shoes, I probably won't invest anything further for a long while. The fact that that "Joe guy"'s personal information was in your PPC tells me that you should make a clean reset (which I assume you did) and re-install everything from scratch.

It does not make sense that your device becomes "normal" again; but no, I don't think you'll need to replace your screen. Just backup your files regularly and get a new PPC or smartphone when it dies.