laptop power problems

paul2468

Six months ago my compaq presario CQ 61 died on me, when i went to power up nothing happened, took it to a local shop, he tested it and said it was most likely the mother board and not worth getting it fixed.
I bought a new laptop and put the old one away..3 months later i was going to bin it but switched it on first and it worked great...for 2 weeks..then the same happened again....this has happened twice since...anyone got any idea why this happens ?

GunJack

intermittent power jack ?? overheating and thermal shut-down ?? You don't describe what happened from the first incident in enough detail to be able to do anything other than stab in the dark......

robmar0se

GunJack wrote: »

intermittent power jack ?? overheating and thermal shut-down ?? You don't describe what happened from the first incident in enough detail to be able to do anything other than stab in the dark......

If the "shop" said it was probably a mobo issue, it might be a cold solder, which can depending on ambient temp etc reconnect from time to time. There are some blogs about "reflowing" parts of the mobo on the cq series - not that I've tried this.

GunJack

a dry joint could cause this, but I'd suggest a long shot - a typical lappy isn't subjected to the temperature shifts that would easily show this up....did the shop use heatgun/freezer spray during their diagnosis ??

robmar0se

GunJack wrote: »

a dry joint could cause this, but I'd suggest a long shot - a typical lappy isn't subjected to the temperature shifts that would easily show this up....did the shop use heatgun/freezer spray during their diagnosis ??

We can only guess as to what the possible causes are for the system occasionally rebooting.

Secondly, we can only guess what the shop did, but the simplest check is to use a multimeter to check the input voltages. If there is good power on the terminals on the back of the power socket (battery removed) then if the system won't boot up, this could indicate a mobo issue? If then it sometimes boots the only thing I could think of was a cold solder. Not uncommon, and maybe a long shot - just read up the Dell M5030 issues which are causing considerable frustration at the mo. HP CQ series do have similar cold solder problems.

Would be an interesting test if the OP was to try reducing the ambient temp, try booting, then increase it to say 30C and try again?

Notmyrealname

Usually you need to reball the laptop GPU or northbridge.

Welcome to environmentally lead free solder - responsible for putting millions of more tonnes of electronic waste in landfill than anything else.