Is This the End of the Laptop?

[billroper]

Our several years old HP laptop has been having problems with the charger connection for a while. I think that the problem is actually a short in the charger cord, so I've spent a few bucks to order a new charger. If that works, I'll be fine.

If not, my understanding of these laptops is that you need to replace the motherboard to fix the internal adaptor. If that's the case, I have a brick.

In the meantime, I'm going to shut this down while it still has some charge left so I can get files off it.

Comments

[pheltzer.livejournal.com]

We have a problem with our HP laptop as well. I thought it was the battery, so I replaced that. It worked for a couple of months. Now it only runs if directly plugged into the wall. Let me know if the charger fixes things

[blueeyedtigress.livejournal.com]

If it's just the charger cord, more power to you (no pun intended!). Thing drove me stark staring nuts when I was there -- the moment I turned my back, it stopped charging. 8P

Best of luck safeguarding the files, at very least!

[dave-ifversen.livejournal.com]

I know this is a common problem with some Dell laptops - the charger plug is on a little "penninsula" of circuit board. The board flexes and cracks, and the power doesn't get into the computer any more - the computer only works as long as the battery is charged. I didn't realize that HP suffered from the same problem. This is sometimes fixable (wires can be soldered on to where the connector is soldered on the motherboard), but you need to know where the other end of these traces end up (and the power traces, a lot of the time, are on the inside layers of a multi-layer PC board - very hard to trace out without a schematic).

[bedlamhouse]

If you are good enough with solder to put wires onto those teensy surface mount pads, you're way above my head and I am, officially, Not Worthy.

If the rest of the laptop is OK (case, hard drive, performance), you could look into getting a pennies on the dollar mobo from eBay where someone broke the case...

[dave-ifversen.livejournal.com]

I've managed to fix one laptop that had this problem - doing the soldering is not usually where I have trouble, it's finding where the other ends of the wires I am adding need to go.

If you want tricky soldering jobs, try fixing flatpanel displays. :-) The usual failure mode (80% of the time) is a surface mount fuse on the inverter board that powers the backlight - it just blows, for no reason that I can find. I've fixed about 20 of these that had this problem (most people just toss the display when it stops lighting up, which is a terrible waste).

[bedlamhouse]

Don't forget you can get a USB 2.5" hard drive case for pretty cheap - once you get the new computer, pull the drive from the old one, pop it in the USB enclosure, plug it into the new one, et voy lah, as they say.

I keep a 3.5 and 2.5 enclosure around because they are just too handy for file transfers from dead things to live ones...