Do I need a new mother board?

redsteveireland

My wifes Dell Inspiron Laptop just stopped working the other day. It was shutdown during the morning and when she tried to use it again, nothing.
When you plug in the power supply the green LED goes out, this happens with and without the battery in place. I know this is some sort of protection mode for the power supply but what are the possible causes and will it be an expensive fix?

Luckydog69

I,ve just had the same problem with a friends laptop.. I was replacing the hard drive for him and was in the middle of reinstalling Windows when it just died..was plugged in as battery bad. Green light in charger went out, tried it in another outlet socket still no joy, tried another Dell charger and second it made contact with laptop green light went out. I stripped the whole laptop removing battery, hard drive, Ram, wireless card, keyboard, fan, basically anything that was connected to motherboard.. then I connected the power supply again to the bare motherboard and again green light on charger went out:(. I checked the dc jack also just incase the soldering had dislodged and was forming a bad connection... these jacks don't usually go bad suddenly, they usually give warnings where you would have to wiggle the power cable to get a good connection. If you can try another charger and the same thing happens then more that likely something is causing the charger to shut down, by stripping the individual components out you can pinpoint the item that is problematic. You could get a motherboard on Ebay for handy enough money, I got one for 45 Euro from the UK ...it probably would cost more to repair the old damaged motherboard... As well Dell laptops are very easy to diassemble and work on. Hope this helps:)

redsteveireland

That's a great help, i don't mind giving it a go myself so I'll try it out tomorrow.

Capt'n Midnight

remove the battery and power supply

press and hold the on/off button for three minutes


always worth a try

redsteveireland

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

remove the battery and power supply

press and hold the on/off button for three minutes


always worth a try

What's does that do? Some sort of default reset?

Moon54

redsteveireland wrote: »

What's does that do? Some sort of default reset?

It drains any remaining power left in the laptop's capacitors etc.
It's worth a try.

To me, though, that sounds like a tiny power-regulating capacitor on the main board may have short-circuited,
thus causing the power supply's safety feature to kick in, and the LED to flash.

Capt'n Midnight

redsteveireland wrote: »

What's does that do? Some sort of default reset?

sorta

on many devices including laptops this drains power from chips so hopefully it will reset any volatile memory

it works often enough that it's worth doing before you go reaching for a screwdriver. it's worth trying because it's cheap, quick and easy and can be pleasantly surprising

again you must remove the battery and the PSU because you want to get rid of all the power

NOTE: some laptops have a coin cell battery to backup the date / time , also worth trying to disconnect it too, - some are more accessible than others - and pressing on/off for a few minutes , - if you are going down the path of replacing the motherboard it's worth a shot. won't reset passwords or that sort of stuff but sometimes works.



if you can borrow a power supply / battery from another of the same laptop it might be worth trying - hopefully it's a dead psu - unlikely but it might be the case that the laptop works only on a battery charged elsewhere


depending on the vintage it might be cheaper to buy the same model laptop second hand and swap over the HDD than trying to source and fit the motherboard (also you know a working laptop works, motherboards you can't guarantee )

redsteveireland

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

sorta

on many devices including laptops this drains power from chips so hopefully it will reset any volatile memory

it works often enough that it's worth doing before you go reaching for a screwdriver. it's worth trying because it's cheap, quick and easy and can be pleasantly surprising

again you must remove the battery and the PSU because you want to get rid of all the power

NOTE: some laptops have a coin cell battery to backup the date / time , also worth trying to disconnect it too, - some are more accessible than others - and pressing on/off for a few minutes , - if you are going down the path of replacing the motherboard it's worth a shot. won't reset passwords or that sort of stuff but sometimes works.



if you can borrow a power supply / battery from another of the same laptop it might be worth trying - hopefully it's a dead psu - unlikely but it might be the case that the laptop works only on a battery charged elsewhere


depending on the vintage it might be cheaper to buy the same model laptop second hand and swap over the HDD than trying to source and fit the motherboard (also you know a working laptop works, motherboards you can't guarantee )

Thanks. I will try the reset first. I have spied a few second hand ones and thought about swopping the HDD, currently bidding on one on Ebay. Tried the power supply in another laptop and it works fine.

janeparker

Hi redsteveireland,

It is better to contact with laptop's manufacturer. Might be possible that they would be able to fix the issue if any kind of nominal damage occurred.

Regards:
Jane

Capt'n Midnight

Perhaps if you posted the model number people might be able to offer more specific advice. Some models had known problems. And a few older models were subject to manufacturing defects and so entitled to out of warranty repair.

redsteveireland

It's an Inspiron N5040.

Tried that power button reset, no joy.
Still keeping an eye on ebay.

Capt'n Midnight

service manual ftp://ftp.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_laptop/esuprt_inspiron_laptop/inspiron-15-intel-n5040_Owner's Manual_en-us.pdf


stuff below doesn't really apply until the lights are back on.


remove optical drive, hard drive - more because it's easy to do rather than because it's likely to be the problem



take keyboard off and disconnect power switch , many Dell's will power on if the power switch is removed , handy to diagnose it - this one has a board for the switch - disconnect the board





look up power board on ebay - not sure if this one has one, other Inspiron 15's do


and you aren't getting any beeps ?


Also try the laptop with an external monitor , just in case it's just the backlight gone or something .



POST CARD - for reference it goes in to the mini-pci slot , probably won't help if you are getting no signs of life
http://dx.com/p/3-in-1-mini-pci-e-mini-pci-lpc-2-digit-analyzer-tester-post-card-for-laptop-115004

Try reseating the RAM. If only one then try it in the other socket.
If two then try one at a time in each socket. Try it without ram too


if you remove all the connections to the motherboard apart from the speaker and either power supply or battery then you should get POST beeps. - drastic but if you don't then it's not sounding good for the M/B

then try reseating the CPU

redsteveireland

In the interim I have blagged a laptop until the exams are over. I wonder would the hard drive from the N5040 fit in the Inspiron 1521 I borrowed...Would there be any issues with hardware by just swopping the hard drive?

bonzodog2

It may physically fit, but there's a good chance the Windows installation won't boot correctly on the borrowed laptop

redsteveireland

bonzodog2 wrote: »

It may physically fit, but there's a good chance the Windows installation won't boot correctly on the borrowed laptop

That's what i'm afraid of, I think I will just put windows 7 on the borrowed(she might not actually get it back) laptop as I hate Vista.