Checking laptop charger

agrinnall

My HP G61 110SA laptop, bought in January 2010 and used pretty much daily since then (so it's had a fair amount of use) turned itself off today and doesn't appear to want to charge any more. If I press the power button all three lights flash but it won't turn on.

I'm hoping that the problem is the charger (HP N193), and if I'm in luck I may have access to another one in the next few days. Before then, is there anything obvious that I can do to check if the charger has stopped working? Annoyingly it doesn't have a LED so there's no visible indication that it's working.

cleaninggenie

Hi,

what condition is your laptop battery in? is your laptop more or less running off the mains now(i.e. you have to keep it plugged in at all times). If your battery is still holding charge then it could be the charger. can you take the battery out and wait about 6 seconds then put it back and try turning your computer back on again and see how that goes

nickcc

Very often the problem is the charging Jack in the Laptop. I have two Toshiba satellite laptops and both jacks broke after about 3 years due to the charger cable being constantly inserted and removed, tripping over the cable and pulling the plug out at an angle also doesn't help. I bought two replacement jacks off ebay for about £8 and fitted them myself, not sure about HP but plenty of YouTube how to videos available for Jack replacements.

agrinnall

Panic over, one of my friends who has the same laptop suggested removing the battery and trying it without, and that worked. I've then put the battery back in and it's now charging and running OK, so it must have been a glitch that fixed itself by taking the battery out.

Thanks for the replies, I run it on the mains 99% of the time but generally the battery still seems to be OK at holding the charge under normal circumstances. And I have had the jack problem with previous laptops, luckily this one seems to be quite sturdy, and touch wood hasn't been an issue.

Kernel_Sanders

So the solution was basically the equivalent of turning it off and then back on again

But seriously, if it's mains powered so often why run it with the battery in situ ?

agrinnall

Kernel_Sanders wrote: »

So the solution was basically the equivalent of turning it off and then back on again

But seriously, if it's mains powered so often why run it with the battery in situ ?

Not really, the point was that once it had turned itself off it wouldn't turn back on, and only did so once the battery had been removed.

And this is the first time I've ever removed the battery from this or indeed any laptop, I'd thought it might be a more complicated process requiring a screwdriver (and who can be bothered to look for a screwdriver every time you want to take out or put in a battery?), although in fact it turned out to be very easy, so I could leave the battery out in future, but I think I can probably live with one issue every 5 years .