Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Urchin on May 24, 2011, 08:01:12 AM
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Well, my wife managed to break her laptop somehow. It won't turn on at all this morning after working fine last night.
The power brick shows a green light. Have had her take the battery out and try to power it on with wall power and it doesn't turn on. Had her try clearing the capacitors and that didn't work. I don't know much about laptops ... she was trying to get it packed over the past couple days in her luggage but it was working ok last night so I am not sure what caused this.
Any ideas on how to get this pos fired back up?
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No error codes from the power-on self-test? No beeps at all? That's not good... :(
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It seems it's a trend with low/mid priced laptops to stop working after about two years. The culprit is a chip on the motherboard losing contact at some of it's soldering points. That's bad news, mobos - if available - cost almost as much as a new laptop. I've seen them being fixed with a blow torch, but the results vary...
There might be other, easier to fix, reasons: The fixed cable of the power brick may shortcut at the box end or even elsewhere, if driven over with a wheeled chair. Check the output with a voltage meter. Or try with another psu.
And although the computer might be beyond reasonable repair, the hard disk is most probably at least readable. With a USB-to-SATA/IDE cable you can plug it into a working machine and copypaste all her invaluable stuff to a safe location.
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Can the HDD be read without power? The computer won't turn on - I just got back from buying her a new laptop.
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Can the HDD be read without power? The computer won't turn on - I just got back from buying her a new laptop.
Nope, you need to power up a hard drive to read it.
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You could buy a hard drive enclosure, remove the hard drive from the old laptop, install it into the enclosure and then just copy anything you want to keep over.
Something like this: http://www.amazon.com/External-Portable-2-5-inch-Enclosure-Laptop/dp/tech-data/B002AQ5DC2 (http://www.amazon.com/External-Portable-2-5-inch-Enclosure-Laptop/dp/tech-data/B002AQ5DC2)
Or if the new laptop has a second hard drive bay you can just install it as a second hard drive. Not likely with an 'economy' laptop though.
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I'm guessing a broken power plug connection inside the laptop itself coupled with a dead battery. Happens all the time to laptops. If she was trying to pack the thing up, and over stressed the plug connection it could've broken.
If that IS the case, it's an easy fix.