is there a computer dr(repair expert) in the house?

[feralfreak]

i got a bit of a problem, on my other laptop(the one i got before i was given this one im on by a friend for helping her move),the power supply gave out in 2019i think(id have to look and see exactly when),it made popping noises like bacon and stopped charging, so that machine was sitting till xmas night not getting any power at all. xmas i was given a power supply for it, bought from amazon, and the page specifically said it was compatible for my machine, an hp elitebook8460p, i plugged it in and turned it on, worked fine for an hour, then it died, the screen went black, the caps lock key light blinks, the scroll lock key flashes, the power and battery lights stay on. i tried to turn it back on and it wont,i took out the battery and unplugged it, let it sit a whole day, put the battery back in and before i even touch the useless power button, those same lights are doing as i said before. the power button does not turn it on, it wont turn on.

can someone tell me what might have happened, and what i can do to fix it?

[Firefly 35]

It sounds like there might be a short.  Try with a non-amazon charging cable to see if it's just the charger, you can probably get one at Best Buy, Micro Center, or stores like that.  If it doesn't work, I'd recomend just getting a new machine and see if you can salvage the RAM, CPU, GPU, and/or hard drive as some of those may still work and can be repurposed in building your own computer (if you want, it's not as hard as you'd think), or sell them (if going this route please bring them to a repair shop to determine if any are dead.  Also if you had anything really important saved to your hard drive you can usually get your data recovered.)  Unless you need or prefer a latop, I'd recommend a desktop instead.  They're usually easier to deal with when things happen unexpectedly.

 

TLDR: It might just be the charging cord.  Otherwise you're computer's probably toast.  Don't buy tech things on Amazon, they often don't work.

[feralfreak]

8 hours ago, Firefly 35 said:

It sounds like there might be a short.  Try with a non-amazon charging cable to see if it's just the charger, you can probably get one at Best Buy, Micro Center, or stores like that.  If it doesn't work, I'd recomend just getting a new machine and see if you can salvage the RAM, CPU, GPU, and/or hard drive as some of those may still work and can be repurposed in building your own computer (if you want, it's not as hard as you'd think), or sell them (if going this route please bring them to a repair shop to determine if any are dead.  Also if you had anything really important saved to your hard drive you can usually get your data recovered.)  Unless you need or prefer a latop, I'd recommend a desktop instead.  They're usually easier to deal with when things happen unexpectedly.

 

TLDR: It might just be the charging cord.  Otherwise you're computer's probably toast.  Don't buy tech things on Amazon, they often don't work.

when i put the battery back in before i put the cord in, it still does the those lights like i said, im wondering if i need a new motherboard.

[Crinklz Kat]

Try it without the battery. it's possible the battery itself is what's dead.

[feralfreak]

i tried just plugging it in without the battery, before i touched the power button, which did nothing, the lights i mentioned did the same

[oznl]

You may want to start by looking it up by serial number on the hp website and seeing if you can pull down a manual for it.

https://support.hp.com/us-en/products

Some of those older machines had a "power reset" function whereby you held down the power button for > 15 seconds.  If not, the manual might let you at least interpret what the LED pattern is trying to tell you.

I'm assuming that the caps lock LED doesn't toggle on and off when you hit caps lock right?  If it did, I'd be thinking quite a bit of that system might actually be alive and you'd just start by plugging in an external monitor to rule out a dead screen.

I'm a bit uneasy that it worked for an hour or so then died though.  I'd have expected a lithium ion battery that had been left laying around for more than 2 years to have gone under volt and shut itself down out of the gate.

[Babygeebee]

It could be the cmos battery on the motherboard that is dead. If the computer is left unplugged it will eventually die. Depending on the laptop it can be a real bear to replace. 

[Firefly 35]

On 1/7/2023 at 1:58 AM, oznl said:

I'm a bit uneasy that it worked for an hour or so then died though.  I'd have expected a lithium ion battery that had been left laying around for more than 2 years to have gone under volt and shut itself down out of the gate.

That's how amazon makes its money. 

[feralfreak]

12 minutes ago, Firefly 35 said:

That's how amazon makes its money. 

its not the battery, its the power supply(cord with bricky thing), after it shut off it wont turn on, at all

[Firefly 35]

Like @oznlsaid, if you can find a manual somewhere it might give you some clues as to what's going on.  From my experience however it's usually a bad sign if it doesn't start up but it could still be good, don't give up just yet.

[Mars.inDiapers]

First thing I'd do, get a mutlimeter (basic cheap one will do, or borrow one if you can), and measure what kind of voltage does the power brick output on the round power connector (minus is outside, plus is inside) and see if it matches the rated output. Also note that the original power supply for this model had 19V  rated output voltage, so a compatible 3rd party PSU should match that  (with some tolerance, but it shouldn't be way off. I'd say at most about +/- 0.5 volts). If the rated voltage of the non-original PSU you're using is way higher, then I'm afraid that's not a good sign. However the rated voltage is not likely to be higher than 20 volts.

Anyway, a measurement is often more reliable than what's printed on the label.

If you measure much less than rated voltage, the PSU might be broken, but the laptop might still work with a proper one. The laptop battery is likely dead though (dead enough not to be able to power the laptop).

If you measure zero, then there's something wrong with the multimeter, or you're using it incorrectly (it can't possibly be zero since as you say the laptop is reacting to the power brick in some way. 

If you measure much more than the rated voltage, the power brick failed in the worst possible way, taking the motherboard (and possibly other components) with it.

If you measure the correct voltage, the power supply probably sort of works, but the output voltage may have spiked and killed the board (and possibly other components).

 

If it's the worst case scenario (dead motherboard and possibly other components), the only option might be to either 1) replace the motherboard and hope nothing else in it is fried, or 2)  salvage whatever replacable components there are in the laptop, which in this case should be the CPU (afaik, this model has a socketed, not soldered CPU), battery, SODIMM stick(s) and HDD or SSD (whichever of the two it has). The rest is e-waste.

 

On 1/7/2023 at 7:58 AM, oznl said:

I'm a bit uneasy that it worked for an hour or so then died though.  I'd have expected a lithium ion battery that had been left laying around for more than 2 years to have gone under volt and shut itself down out of the gate.

Well I've got one anecdote about such a thing. My mum's boyfriend had an Asus U36JC, and at some point, for unknown reason, took off the bottom cover, didn't bother to put it back on, lost the screws, and left it in this state our garden house fireplace, where it sat abandoned for more than a year, including a winter (a quite cold one at that). 

I asked him what's wrong with it and if I can take it. 

Well it did have some issues, such as the wifi cutting out when the sceen was tilted in a specific angle, and the dedicated GPU (nvidia GT 310M) was causing errors, and the screen had some scuffs, but other than that, it worked fine. It would have probably been completely fine if the previous owner took proper care of it (dust the inside, and reapply fresh thermal paste before it's too late and the graphics chip becomes unstable).

But most surprisingly of all, the battery still worked. It survived the year and some of never being recharged and left in cold. Not only did it work, it held proper charge. Not as much as a brand new battery, but maybe about 80% capacity.

After some proper care (replacing lost screws, cleaning it thouroughly and repasting the heatsinks, replacing the mechanical drive with an SSD, finding a matching stick of SO-DIMM to the 4GB one that was already in it, it ran like new. Actually better than new, because of the SSD and extra RAM. Well, as long as it was used with the integrated intel GPU and not the nvidia dGPU. Which wasn't that good anyway, although better than the iGPU, but not enough to do any gaming, and not adding any benefit for casual use (browsing, editing documents).

I used it for a while and eventually flipped it for a little bit more than the cost of SSD and RAM I put in it.

TLDR. Li-ion batteries can be surprisingly tough.