Used another manufacturers power adapter, now the laptop doesn't receive power.

Colorful Life

Honorable
Apr 6, 2013
9
0
10,510
My laptop is a DELL Inspiron 14. I forgot the power adapter so I tried on my friends laptop's power adapter. It is a rather old Toshiba laptop but the power pins seemed pretty close. So I inserted it into my laptop. The icon in the system tray showed plugged in but when I hover the pointer on the icon it says "Not charging".

After I am home, I inserted my laptop's power adapter, to my dismay, there is no indication of it being plugged in. The charging LED did not lit up. The system tray icon did not show any indication of power adapter being plugged in. I though maybe it's a battery issue. So I removed the battery and tried to power on the laptop with the power adapter being plugged it. It did not work.


What happened? What should I do now?
 
Solution
You likely fried the charger board. If you are lucky it's not part of the motherboard, otherwiss it requires a new motherboard. I'd need the exact model of the laptop to find out which kind you have.

dudio

Admirable
Get a good flashlight and focus your eyes, and have a look inside the power jack on the laptop.
I suspect it may be that the center pin or pins (not sure exactly what yours has) is/are damaged or misaligned.
If it looks off center, ever so gently try to make it right
 

Colorful Life

Honorable
Apr 6, 2013
9
0
10,510



My laptop's power pin is female in all respects, there is no center pin to align.
 

Dragos Manea

Estimable
Mar 30, 2015
139
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4,660


In all do respect it must have a center part, https://cdn6.bigcommerce.com/s-r4tr0/products/229030/images/335013/16762Large__00248.1457144424.1280.1280.jpg?c=2, do you see the small center part? Be sure it touches the center part of your notebook, it might be bended or so inside. Also your friends charger might have the center part much thicker and it spread the cooper foils too much and now it does not touch your charger center part.