Laptop power adapter port failing. I think?

[mylescloutier]

Well, I have this Dell Inspiron 6000, the warranty ended in early January. Since then my hard drive has failed, so I had to buy a new hard drive already for this thing.

Now for the past week or so I have noticed that the screen would dim then un-dim once and a while when I moved it, even the slightest bit. The screen of course is set to dim when switching to battery power, so I knew what it was right away.

I wasn't too worried, I just figured it had happened to come loose a couple times close together, as it's normally on my lap when I'm using it plugged in, I figured it wouldn't be that hard. It wasn't until a couple days ago when this started happening even more often that I began to really worry. Now there are more spots where it doesn't work than it does.

I read around a bit and people say that it is the adapter connection, which is on the motherboard, and they said if it can be replaced without replacing the mobo it shouldn't cost to much, but if the mobo needs to be replaced I'm screwed.

Anyone here have any experience with Dell support? Am I totally screwed? Will it cost upwards of $200? Should I just go buy a Mac? (haha)

Please, any knowledge is welcome.

Thanks.

 

[Gibson486]

If you know how to solder, replacing the DC jack should be easy. What's hard is removing the the mother board to do so. if it is anything like my gateway, you will be removing over 40 screws when you are done. Other than that, the replacement is cake.

What's probably happening is that you have moved the port so much that the solder holding it in place is cracked and is no longer making contact. If this is teh case, then you just need to close teh joints back up with fresh solder. You'll know when your dc jack fails when you can no longer power the laptop w/o the battery and the power brick starts shorting and a spark comes out from the back right when you apply the brick to the laptop.

Another challenge is finding out which DC jack your motherboard uses. My advice is to just go on ebay and look up Inspiron 6000 DC jack. The price may be higher than digikey, but keep in mind that lots of those types of places require you to order more than $50 or they will add a handling fee, which neglects savings you have. If you use the same dc jack as a gateway 600 series laptop, I may have a few laying around that i can sell you.

 

[tami]

i've bought lots of laptop adapters on ebay after my warranties have expired... i know you suspect your problem is the port, but if you can try another adapter, you might find the real culprit.

 

[mylescloutier]

I've tried my spare adapter, no luck. So I guess the next best thing would be opening it up. Hmm. I think I'll wait a day or two, it's getting worse so I have no doubt soon I won't be able to even charge the battery at all.

Thanks for the advice so far.

 

[mylescloutier]

Well two hours later, one semi-successful laptop disassembly re-assembly completed. I say semi because I looked at the dc jack and there were absolutely no signs of any sort of bad solder connection. In fact it was rock solid.

This makes me not so happy.

Although, I did learn a bit about taking laptops apart, and I found this HUGE clump of dust on the heat sink, which is never good. (I even took pictures it was so big!) Running a lot quieter now that the dust is all cleaned out. I feel more in touch with the laptop now that I know what all it's parts look like. (Okay, that sounded really weird.)

PICTURE HERE

 

[Gibson486]

Originally posted by: mylescloutier
Well two hours later, one semi-successful laptop disassembly re-assembly completed. I say semi because I looked at the dc jack and there were absolutely no signs of any sort of bad solder connection. In fact it was rock solid.

This makes me not so happy.

Although, I did learn a bit about taking laptops apart, and I found this HUGE clump of dust on the heat sink, which is never good. (I even took pictures it was so big!) Running a lot quieter now that the dust is all cleaned out. I feel more in touch with the laptop now that I know what all it's parts look like. (Okay, that sounded really weird.)

PICTURE HERE

Well...it could be the dc jack itself. I had the same thign happen to my gateway ( it kept dimming and undimming). It could be something internal in the jack itself. It's not really worth replacing the dc jack if you are not atleast 99% sure that is the culprit.