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Why is my battery/charger not working?
highland paddy
Posts: 672 Forum Member
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I'm having two problems at the moment which may or may not be related:
1) The charger isn't working unless I put the cable in a specific position and keep it there, only then will the light come on and stay on unless it's moved about again. Do I need a new charger?
2) My battery seems to have very little life left. If not using the charger it will cut off after maybe fifteen minutes instead of an hour or so, and is getting worse. Not only that, I don't get a warning on low battery time anymore, it just cuts off altogether and I have to restart the computer all over. Do I just need a new battery or is something else going on?
1) The charger isn't working unless I put the cable in a specific position and keep it there, only then will the light come on and stay on unless it's moved about again. Do I need a new charger?
2) My battery seems to have very little life left. If not using the charger it will cut off after maybe fifteen minutes instead of an hour or so, and is getting worse. Not only that, I don't get a warning on low battery time anymore, it just cuts off altogether and I have to restart the computer all over. Do I just need a new battery or is something else going on?
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Either:
A. the cable/plug is faulty on the charger, or
B. the power socket on the PC is broken.
A is solved by getting a new charger lead. B may require repair of your PC which may not be easy.
What make/model is your PC?
Alternatively try your charger on a similar laptop. A third option is to use a multimeter to measure the voltage on the plug. If you can hold the probes in place and wiggle the lead about that might tell you if there is a fault with the plug (broken wire where it enters the plug body is a very common failure)
If the charger isn't connecting properly then chances are the battery hasn't been receiving a decent charge. If you do have a friend/family member with the same laptop try swapping batteries. If your laptop works OK on another battery and your battery does not work in another laptop even after a good charge then chances are your battery has died.
It might be a pain in the wotsits getting hold of a similar laptop to test bits with but it would be the easiest way to determine what is broken. After all would be rather a waste of money if you went out and bought another charger only to discover there is nothing wrong with the existing one and it's the socket on the laptop that is cream crackered.
most laptops (not dell or compaq) use a standard 19v charger with standard plug. might be a good idea if u can borrow a charger from somebody else just to see whether its that or the actual pc socket .......
some computers have a non standard 3 wire charge socket if youre unlucky ......
at worst u should only hav 2 buy a new charger ! main thing is check carefully the type of plug on end. if the charger socket on computer is faulty that would be extremely unluucky .....
why you think that ?
But almost certainly a person playing the lottery is going to lose, and it's the same with DC jack sockets...
So it's a wasted expenditure on a power charger brick, probably.
As for the battery, it is probably done for. They go that way. Usually you get a few seconds warning though.
that is why I suggest wiggling the wire, generally, and at the connector, to try and find out where on the wire the problem is.
obviously make sure the connector is pushed fully in !
if the mains connection is ok, then, the light on charger should stay on, but the power and charge lights on computer should go on and off, as you move the wire going from charger to computer, depending exactly where the problem is ........
if instead the computer socket iffy cos of dry joint on main pcb, that would be unlucky ..........
So do I not just need a new battery then?
You may have two issues. Your OP said that the charger only works if the plug is in a specific position and that the battery does not last long.
The two may be related in that the charger is not being connected long enough to charge the battery correctly. However if you have managed to connect the charger continuously for long enough that the battery should be fully charged then if everything is working properly the battery should run for several hours.
If it isn't then either the charger circuit inside the laptop is faulty or the battery is faulty. Chances are it is the battery but ideally you need to confirm this first before splashing out on a replacement.
As I posted earlier the only way to be certain what is going on is to try and swap your potentially faulty parts for known working parts.
If at all possible you should swap the battery into a laptop with a known working charger. Let the battery run fully flat then allow it to recharge fully and then see how long it lasts in the good laptop. That will tell you for certain if the battery is OK or not. Similarly if a known good battery powers your laptop for a reasonable time then you know it's not your laptop causing the problem.
If there is a fault in the laptop then changing the battery might not get you anywhere. In the long run correctly identifying the faulty parts and just repairing or replacing those will be cheaper than just randomly swapping parts out in the hope that you fix it. If you are lucky you may hit the problem first time. If not you may swap out virtually the whole machine spending hundreds of quid only to discover it was all due to some bit costing a couple of quid.
probably the DC jack where it plugs in, normally the jacks for 5-10 quid off fleabay the real pain can be dismantling the lappy to swap it over
Fixing the DC Socket is a major job for most people.
I suppose some laptops might make it easy. Hard to know without knowing the make/model.
Found some YouTube videos for that model. Looks like the DC jack is soldered to the motherboard and looks a royal pain in the wotsits to replace it.
It would not be a job for anyone who doesn't know one end of a soldering iron from the other.:o:o
Theres plenty of teardown instructions for it to be able to get to the dc jack
this seems a reasonable video showing the process - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcuXw4YH1nc
get a few magnetized screwdrivers and record each place you took a screw from with a digi cam/phone and place them in a line so when you are down you can work backwards quite easily and not crack something by trying to put a larger screw into a hole
It's unfortunately quite involved apparently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pjYMOBLo10
The Power Socket might just need to be re-soldered (to the main board) rather than replaced. It seems it's a bad design, almost guaranteed to break eventually.
If you can take it to pieces as in the video then you would still need to have a fairly fine soldering iron (and some solder) to resolder it.
Depends and theres no guarantee that it is the DC jacks thats at fault as it could be a mainboard fault, you'd be better off getting on the phone and ringing a few places to get an idea of whats the local price but given you can get one on ebay for around 150 quid second hand and 'supposedly' working it's not going to be worth spending anything stupid on it
£75 for a Samsung at my local one man repair shop this time last year. I'm not sure if it was a desolder from the board job or not though...didn't think to ask at the time.