So my HP DV6700 laptop I purchased in August 2008 is dead, leaving me to post this from the archaic computer I first got 5 years ago when I left town for college .
At this point I'm basically trying to narrow down the source of the issue so I can decide which piece of hardware to purchase and replace, or whether or not I should just scrap the whole damn thing. Naturally, it's out of warranty, but maybe some of you guys with more laptop hardware experience than me (which is essentially zero) might have some tips.
The other day, out of the blue, I noticed that in the tray of my computer's screen, the low battery light is on, even though it's plugged into an AC adapter. However, the little blue LED built into the DC jack, which is always on when the computer is plugged into AC power, was off. This led me to believe the problem was with the transformer on the AC adapter, which I confirmed with a digital multimeter.
I had a backup adapter, and once I plugged that in, the little blue light in the jack came on, but the laptop didn't recognize the external power source - it slowly kept drawing a charge from the battery until it finally shut down. I figured that there must be a problem somewhere between the DC jack and the motherboard--battery charger prongs, since external power was not able to charge the battery nor run the laptop directly from DC, yet the battery could still power it (the LED on the DC jack only seems to indicate that there is a voltage in the adapter line, not that the laptop is drawing power). After the laptop shut down and was no longer able to start up, I noticed that pressing the power button would only cause a small blue LED on the front edge of the laptop to blink a couple of times. This LED was a set of three, which were each next to a small picture of a lightning bolt, the power symbol, and a disk drive. The one that blinks is under the lightning bolt.
I spent about 2 hours carefully dissecting the laptop, thinking I may find a broken wire or solder joint. No such luck. My multimeter showed that 20 Volts is actually reaching the motherboard, but beyond that, I was not able to see anything out of the ordinary, nor was I sure of any other tests to run.
Have any of you ever seen something like this, or would you laptop experts care to take a guess as to what may be causing this? Could the entire motherboard need to be replaced?
At this point I'm basically trying to narrow down the source of the issue so I can decide which piece of hardware to purchase and replace, or whether or not I should just scrap the whole damn thing. Naturally, it's out of warranty, but maybe some of you guys with more laptop hardware experience than me (which is essentially zero) might have some tips.
The other day, out of the blue, I noticed that in the tray of my computer's screen, the low battery light is on, even though it's plugged into an AC adapter. However, the little blue LED built into the DC jack, which is always on when the computer is plugged into AC power, was off. This led me to believe the problem was with the transformer on the AC adapter, which I confirmed with a digital multimeter.
I had a backup adapter, and once I plugged that in, the little blue light in the jack came on, but the laptop didn't recognize the external power source - it slowly kept drawing a charge from the battery until it finally shut down. I figured that there must be a problem somewhere between the DC jack and the motherboard--battery charger prongs, since external power was not able to charge the battery nor run the laptop directly from DC, yet the battery could still power it (the LED on the DC jack only seems to indicate that there is a voltage in the adapter line, not that the laptop is drawing power). After the laptop shut down and was no longer able to start up, I noticed that pressing the power button would only cause a small blue LED on the front edge of the laptop to blink a couple of times. This LED was a set of three, which were each next to a small picture of a lightning bolt, the power symbol, and a disk drive. The one that blinks is under the lightning bolt.
I spent about 2 hours carefully dissecting the laptop, thinking I may find a broken wire or solder joint. No such luck. My multimeter showed that 20 Volts is actually reaching the motherboard, but beyond that, I was not able to see anything out of the ordinary, nor was I sure of any other tests to run.
Have any of you ever seen something like this, or would you laptop experts care to take a guess as to what may be causing this? Could the entire motherboard need to be replaced?
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