Laptop doesn't turn on.

xSimply1337x

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Jan 16, 2014
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First off I'm not new to computers and technology but laptops tend to be my weakness as I don't deal with them much.

I've looked around and all I get is the usual problems but mine is slightly different. I've rules out battery and power adapter as issues as they work fine. I'm hoping that it's not the motherboard or a main chip that's fried.

So what happens is I press the power button and he lights come on and immediately go back off. No fans or other signs of a start-up. So that means no error beeps or error flashes on LEDs.

Anyone know of some things to look into to help diagnose the problem? Feel free to talk tech as I understand what you would be saying.
 
Solution


Sounds like a dead motherboard. The switch supplies the initial power but the board never starts. You can probably replace the board with one from eBay, which might not be a bad thing. You could research the laptop and see what CPU and GPU options it had and go for a upgrade if there were any available. I did this for my Niece, she had a laptop with a Pentium and I was able to upgrade her to a i3 when I had to replace the motherboard. If you go this route, be careful of the cost, you might be better off saving up a bit more for a low end...

nzalog

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Jan 2, 2017
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Try unplug the power adapter and battery, then hold the power button for about 10 seconds. Once you've done that, plug in only the power adapter and see if it will power on.
 

Martell1977

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Oct 26, 2010
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Try removing the RAM and power it on, it should either change nothing or maybe beep with a RAM error. Then test the RAM one module at a time. If nothing changes, I'd say you are probably looking at a motherboard and/or CPU. Without another laptop to test it in, I don't know of a way to narrow it down to one of the other.

The make and model of the laptop would help.
 

Martell1977

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Oct 26, 2010
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Sounds like a dead motherboard. The switch supplies the initial power but the board never starts. You can probably replace the board with one from eBay, which might not be a bad thing. You could research the laptop and see what CPU and GPU options it had and go for a upgrade if there were any available. I did this for my Niece, she had a laptop with a Pentium and I was able to upgrade her to a i3 when I had to replace the motherboard. If you go this route, be careful of the cost, you might be better off saving up a bit more for a low end laptop that would be far more powerful.
 
Solution

nzalog

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Jan 2, 2017
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Sorry I missed the "not" in this sentence : First off I'm not new to computers and technology but laptops tend to be my weakness as I don't deal with them much.

Yeah there isn't much to laptops outside of a giant board that holds the memory and CPU. Sometimes the CPU and Memory is removable so you can test replacing both of those then you're onto basically changing the board out. If you want you can sometimes try to reflow components on the motherboard but that obviously is not for everyone.
 

xSimply1337x

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Jan 16, 2014
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Thanks. It'll cost nearly $200 to get a new mobo for it. Not worth it. Just going to back up the HDD and get another laptop.
 

Martell1977

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For $7-$15 you can turn the HDD into an external HDD for backups or general data storage.