Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Laptop will not start

This is one call that I get at least once a week. The problem though is that I don't generally make any money out of it. The client says that when they press the on button on their notebook nothing happens. No lights or fan noise or the laptop may briefly start up and then stop.

The usual advice I give is to unplug the laptop from the power. Turn the computer over and remove the battery. Most laptops have sliders to unlock the battery allow its removal. Turn the laptop the rightside up and press and hold the on button for 60 seconds. They reason we do this is that even when off for awhile some internal components in the laptop store power. Holding the on button will totally drain power from the laptop. This will cause a corrupt BIOS configuration to be reset.

After the sixty second. plug in the power and try again. If you are lucky the laptop will boot. Another possibility is that the power adapter has failed. Unfortunately to test this you will need a multimeter although you can buy a cheap multimeter for under $20 in hardware stores.

To test the adapter plug it in to the power point. Set the multimeter to Volts and then put one probe on the outside and the other probe on the inside of the metal cylinder that plugs into the laptop. It should read somewhere between 16 to 19Volts. If it doesn't register then you can buy a replacement adapter and you are back in business.

1 comment:

computers gold coast said...

You told the right method to repair the laptop. I liked your tip.