i trust the guy that switched the board but he had a third party check it out cause he couldn't figure it out, he was just going by what he was told. he swapped the board while i watched, the guy is a friend of mine so i have no reason to think he did me wrong. I think it might either be the lcd inverter or the hard drive. i say the hard drive because when i do get it to actually stay on the hard drive light flashes blue then goes off. i tried a hard drive out of my mp3 player and it didn't work but it also has 20 gigs of music on it and no OS. i've been doing some research on line and a few sites have mentioned the 1180's having a problem with the lcd inverter going bad. my problem is i don't want to keep spending money blindly on items for my laptop, it cost me $1700 5 years ago now i spent $200 on a replacement board and another $100 on a new ac adapter. I need to find a way to test the inverter or hard drive with out buying a new one first, neither piece is cheap, not when your already broke. I need to know if the inverter would keep the laptop from turning on and staying on. if so then i will buy the part. i can replace it my self. i am usually pretty good, with tearing things apart and i've done my laptop a few times already. A few sites stated it could be bad ram but i have no way of testing it with out powering it up.