Dead Laptop - Please Can you Help

Hello, I've been away for a long time (over a year) but back again....

My problem is something I've heard of before, but never bothered to find out about it - now its happened to me!

I left my laptop charging all day. When I came back I find that it now won't start at all - no lights, no fans - nothing.

I've tested the charger and it's putting out the correct voltage so I guess that's fine, just that the laptop won't take a charge from it and it is totally dead.

Is there a 'likely' thing that would cause this as I've no idea where to start looking. I'm pretty good at stripping these things and repalcing bits, but not when I don't know what the likely issue is.

So to sum up, it was working fine in the morning, left it on charge all day, now it's totally dead.

Fingers crossed for some encouraging news or at least what I can have a look at.

Thank you to all

Correct voltage on the charger does not mean te charger is working. It may have failed and is unable to provide more than a few microamps. I have one here, voltage is as expected, but connect it to the PC and it dies completely on te output even though the LED indication is working fine.

First step: Remove the battery and then try again - if the PSU has failed then it will not boot. If it does boot then the battery is the problem.

Hello and thank you for that. I'm just back from my brothers who has a similar laptop and borrowed his charger. Tried it and the same thing, the machine won't boot. Removed the battery and tried that, still nothing on the laptop. It seems to point to something inside the machine - any thoughts?

Strip it down as far as you can go. Remove memory cards, hard drive and anything else you can get to easily. Reinsert, remove, reinsert, remove, reinsert. And then try again.

If it isnt the power supply my money would be on the connections of the power plug and the PCB in the laptop, the regulator board (if discrete) or the motherboard if the power regulation is not a discrete board.

It happened to me wereby the charger stopped charging but charger was fine, the battery ran down and stopped. Fortunately for me the laptop was still under warranty - final months of a 3 year warranty.

Have you tried a known, charged, battery in it?

In reply to a post by greenglide:

Have you tried a known, charged, battery in it?

Like brother's?

Had a similar problem with a colleagues laptop. That turned out that where the power jack plugs into the laptop there was a little bit of play. If you gently pushed it in one particular direction (in this case down) then it would make contact and the laptop started to charge. It took a short while of charging before it would kick into life but then up it came and as long as she makes sure she puts the right pressure on the connector when the charging light goes off then it works fine.

Hoepfully it has a charging light on it so gently putting pressure on in various directions of the compus might get that magic light to turn on.