Compaq R3000 Dead.

I'd be willing to bet money on both laptops having faulty pwoer regulators on the mother board, or possibly bad power supplies. There is a reason these were cheap and only had a one year warranty. If you can find someone that will tell you which components on the motherboard there are THOUSANDS of laptop owners that would love to know. Those that do are making a fortune repairing these for next to nothing as the actual components are less than $5.00. No don't expect any of them to tell you either- it borders on a conspiracy.
This is not just Compaq- Dell, Acer and every other major maufacturer has the same problem with their cheap low end laptops. They were built cheap in China or Tiwan using the cheapest components that might hold up for a little over a year- hence the one year warranty. I hate to tell all of you this- but you probably need a new motherboard- and guess what? it's usually cheaper to buy another 1 year warranty laptop. I'll probably get flamed for telling everyone this- but it's the truith.

I just went through this and completely dismantled my laptop. Only to find out after doing this that my charger/invertor suddenly quit putting out enough power to run the machine. You need to have 19 volts and I only had 16. Hope this helps...

Thanks for your honesty---some of which I would like to see rub off on the manufacturers and repair guys. I've already gotten another laptop, a highd-end Sony with a 3 yr warranty, extended---I don't intend to go through this again. I have a private service geek who would tell me anything I want to know, it's just a matter of when he has time to look at it.

If I get that info, I WILL post it here.

Thanks