mraikes
Well-Known Member
- Reaction score
- 1,856
- Location
- Los Lunas, NM
I have a customer's HP/Compaq CQ62 laptop (approx 2-3 years old) that came in for a hard drive replacement - done & fine.
In a "by the way" remark, customer mentions the laptop won't power up unless it's plugged in. If on battery only, the power switch does nothing. If plugged in, the power switch works as usual. And after it starts up, the laptop can be disconnected from mains power and runs great on battery for at least a couple hours.
The customer doesn't want to spend much money on the problem - he's already learned to live with it. So I can't spend a lot of time on it, but if anyone has encountered this before and has suggestions - I'm wide open.
Troubleshooting? None really other than confirming the problem.
Theory #1: Battery is failing to put out enough juice to boot, but trickles out enough to keep it running. Challenge: I can't think of a way to test this without a new battery.
Theory #2: Capacitor problem rather than the battery. If lucky, I'd see obvious blown/bulging capacitors on the MB. Challenge: No budget for a teardown, plus I've not actually seen this as a symptom of bad laptop capacitors.
Theory #3: Bad switch. But I really can't think of any switch failure that would differentiate between battery and mains power.
Am I missing some other likely culprit?
In a "by the way" remark, customer mentions the laptop won't power up unless it's plugged in. If on battery only, the power switch does nothing. If plugged in, the power switch works as usual. And after it starts up, the laptop can be disconnected from mains power and runs great on battery for at least a couple hours.
The customer doesn't want to spend much money on the problem - he's already learned to live with it. So I can't spend a lot of time on it, but if anyone has encountered this before and has suggestions - I'm wide open.
Troubleshooting? None really other than confirming the problem.
Theory #1: Battery is failing to put out enough juice to boot, but trickles out enough to keep it running. Challenge: I can't think of a way to test this without a new battery.
Theory #2: Capacitor problem rather than the battery. If lucky, I'd see obvious blown/bulging capacitors on the MB. Challenge: No budget for a teardown, plus I've not actually seen this as a symptom of bad laptop capacitors.
Theory #3: Bad switch. But I really can't think of any switch failure that would differentiate between battery and mains power.
Am I missing some other likely culprit?