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dead laptop

S

skisteven1

Senior member
My friend has an Inspiron 8200 which seems to have suddenly died during her plane trip. It was in her luggage, but padded well she says, and she's never had a problem with that before.

The PS cable has apparently been verified to be delivering the correct voltage (after the stepdown), but that's all I know. When plugged into the computer, it does NOT show the blinking light that says charging. Pressing the power button gives no response at all.

Any ideas where to look for trouble?
 
hi, you could try taking out the battery, and trying to power up with just the power cable in. another thing could be that something loosened in the laptop, try to take out as much parts as possible and put them back in to ensure its not a loose part. if that laptop can let you take out cd drives, etc take them all out. if some one can handle it, try reseating other parts such as ram, or reseating cables inside the laptop such as the internal power cables. Does the laptop even look like it turns on then off instantly when the power button is pressed? if fans/lights go on then off after 1 second that is the power supply being bad in the laptop from my experience.
 
Do any of the Keyboard LED's light up when you press the power button - they may flash a particular combination to indicate the problem
 
You need to verify that the PSU is working. Put a voltmeter on it (or find someone that knows how). Next likely culprit is that the PSU jack on the laptop is broken. Happens all the time. Sometimes the jack just has a cold solder joint, sometimes it breaks loose from the mobo.

You need to find a local mom & pop computer repair shop that works on laptops (don't take it to a large retail store).

You may want to checks to see if it's still under warranty first. You can go to Dell's web site, click on support, then click on Warranties and enter the laptop's Service Tag and it'll tell you what the warranty expiration date is on that laptop.

Hope this helps...
 
spherrod --- No LED's light up -- there's no reaction at all to hitting the power button, battery in or out
Phil -- when you say PSU, do you mean the PSU in the laptop? (Sorry, I'm not real familiar with laptop hardware). I wasn't sure if laptops had one because of the brick transformer in the AC adapter. So I take it from your comment that you mean the power cable. In which case, that had no effect.

Penguin -- From your comment, i take it to mean that there is a psu in the laptop itself, and that that's what you're refering to. I don't really trust my friend enough to test that on her own, (and i'm out of town), so that'll probably wait until I get in town on wednesday. The laptop is 3 years old, so it's definetly out of warantee.

If you're referring to the power cable, then it's already been tested with a multimeter and is putting out the correct voltage. Haven't checked anything on the laptop itself, but it doesn't run with a battery in either (battery is charged). My first guess was that the problem was with the power distribution system in the laptop, but I'm not sure how that works or where it is.

...does that cover it? Or did I just ramble again...
 
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