Hopefully not dead yet?

September 15, 2007 1:32 PM

Without warning, my laptop suddenly turned off.

It was plugged into the wall. Now, when I try to turn it back on, I don't get a response from any lights or booting up, etc.

It's currently plugged in, and the power/charging light is not lighting up.

The only recent changes are:

(A) Let the battery run down past the time that it could recover what was running (however, once I plugged it in again, it charged, operated as normal, then died several hours later)
(B) Installed nethack from the main nethack website.

This is a work computer, so while I can just trade it in, it would be nice to resolve this myself.

It's running (or ran, rather) Windows XP and is a typical HP laptop.

posted by Pants! to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

How long has it been off? This sounds like a classic overheat shutdown in which case if you wait 20 minutes or so it would come back up. If that is the case a good blowing out of the grills and fans will help prevent a reoccurance.
posted by Mitheral at 1:38 PM on September 15, 2007

Response by poster: Yeah - I tried waiting, it's been a couple of hours. Still no light indicating it's plugged in. I tried a different power cord and a different socket.
posted by Pants! at 1:48 PM on September 15, 2007

Will it start when the battery is removed? If the answer is no, you may need a new motherboard.
posted by phoenixy at 1:53 PM on September 15, 2007

Response by poster: Okay, I tried taking the battery out, it didn't start.

But it still had the same issue: being plugged in but the power indicator light did not light up. Could it be anything other than the motherboard?

I'm willing to accept it if that's what it is, but I hope it's something else.
posted by Pants! at 2:10 PM on September 15, 2007

Possibly it's the power supply but if the battery was charged up it should still start up, just not longer charge the battery. Does the battery have a test function? Quite a few batteries have a button on the bottom as well as indicator lights to show the charge level when you press the button, or the lights may flash when it's charging. Also, if you have a multimeter you can plug the PS in and test to see if works (looking for something in the 10-30VDC range, most likely).
posted by 6550 at 2:18 PM on September 15, 2007

Response by poster: No test function that I could find, no multimeter. I guess I'll just give it to the IT folks in the office on Monday.

Thanks for the help.
posted by Pants! at 2:22 PM on September 15, 2007

It's either the motherboard, a loose power connection, or a bad cord/supply. I know. I had this problem, and had to junk my lappy when switching to a different cord did nothing to fix the problem.
posted by drpynchon at 6:20 PM on September 15, 2007

I had this problem with my last laptop, turned out to be a dead motherboard. For what it's worth it was a two year old Asus M5N.
posted by benign at 7:22 PM on September 15, 2007

It was plugged into the wall.

Power surge?
posted by Reggie Digest at 3:55 PM on September 16, 2007