laptop won't charge

[Big Jim]

Hi all,

Customer bought an Acer laptop into me today that won't charge, he tells me that the battery charges fine and the charger works fine on an identical laptop he has at home, and that the laptop works when the battery is charged.

As it stands the laptop won't power up, I have to assume the battery is dead.

So i start a tear down and test the dc jack with a known working charger and guess what it is fine, laptop still doesnt power up though.

Any ideas where to go from here ?

Thanks
Jim

 

[Martyn]

Hi Jim

It's a little unclear. The laptop you have is laptop A and your clients other one he used for testing is laptop B. Laptop A won't power up but laptop A power charger and battery work fine in laptop B, yes? A fully charged battery from laptop B does or doesn't power up laptop A?

 

[Big Jim]

Laptop A has been bought into shop and is dead, comes with battery and charger, I haven't tested charger yet and have no means of testing battery.

customer tells me that battery and charger work fine in laptop B which I have not seen.

customer also tells me that laptop A works fine once the battery has been charged in laptop B

I can only go on what I have though, I have not seen laptop A working at all.

 

[Big Jim]

Looks like i have found what appears to be the problem, A burnt out surface mount resistor, normally I would not replace these as I cannot guarentee the work and generally it s hard to diagnose faults like this (luck in this case that the problem is very visually obvious) BUT if I did decide to replace it, how do I know what caused the original fault to prevent this happening again ?

Thanks
Jim

 

[Martyn]

Looks like i have found what appears to be the problem, A burnt out surface mount resistor, normally I would not replace these as I cannot guarentee the work and generally it s hard to diagnose faults like this (luck in this case that the problem is very visually obvious) BUT if I did decide to replace it, how do I know what caused the original fault to prevent this happening again ?

Thanks
Jim

You can't really Jim. The burnt out resistor could be the cause but it could be part of some other overload situation. Have a look at the tracka nd see if there is a path to give you a clue.

 

[Big Jim]

track looks fine.
So next question is as the resistor is heavily damaged how do I know what to replace it with ?

Thanks
James

 

[Martyn]

It's 30+ years since I did electronics but unless you have a board diagram or you can see the bands there is no way from memory. The size will give you a clue to the wattage as I recall. I would outsource the work Jim or yopu might make matters worse. It's overloaded for a reason and unless it failed itself then you will have problems.

Edit

Jim I have pm'd you about motherboard repairs.

 

[pcrepairtech]

The motherboard could be dead.