Hello All,
I have a HP Pavilion laptop that has a problem charging. Apparently the receptacle that the cord plugs into has gone bad. It can be fixed, but the shop wants way too much money to fix it. We really like this computer and don’t want to purchase another to replace it.
The computer would work just fine with the battery, the problem is I can’t charge the battery independent of the computer. I can live without plugging the computer in if I could somehow charge the battery by itself. Does anyone know if this is possible? Do they make a device to charge a laptop battery when it isn’t in the computer that doesn’t cost $100’s of dollars?
If I had this problem, I would try to get access to the receptacle, and re-solder it to the board. Second choice would be directly soldering the adapter cord to the board.
I forgot to add, that while the part is available and not expensive I took it to repair shop and the moron behind the counter wanted $250 to repair it. I think he was trying to convince me to purchase one of his new computers. This problem is common and there are instructions and videos of how to do the repair online. I am quite handy in fixing things, but the problem is getting the case apart. I don’t know if I could get it apart without breaking it. If I could the soldering directly to the board wouldn’t be a bad idea. The replacement receptacle is only about $10.
Don’t the repair videos link to how-to-take-it-apart videos? I was able to find instructions for taking apart both laptops I’ve tried to. Lots of screws, and you need a small Phillips head screwdriver, but not hard.
It’s an extremely common repair. So much so that some notebook repair facilities are set up to do this almost exclusively. There are places that will do this for 40-70 dollars.
Are you really sure it’s the port and not the cord? I thought my wife’s Pavilion laptop had a bad power port, but when we brought it to a power port repair shop, the guy said that it was more likely the cord. Sure enough, he pulled a new cord out and demonstrated that the laptop charged just fine. He even refused to sell it to me, saying I could get it cheaper online. (I can’t recommend that guy enough for his honesty, so google power port repair and you’ll find him.)
I bought two power adapters online through Amazon, but they were very prone to overheating. I got a refund and bought another two cords from another vendor, and we’ve been happy so far. Definitely check the cord first, as a power adapter is less than $10.
Yeah, but he has to extract his motherboard from his laptop. It sounds like once he’s done that, he could do the rest himself.
In addition to what Aestivalis said (I’ve had two cords go out on me, but never the jack), if it is the power jack, I’d bet you don’t actually need a new one, and just have a broken solder joint to the old one. Try re-flowing the solder first.
The moron behind the counter is quoting a fairly common albeit high range price for this repair we charge $175
Why? I have to completely strip a laptop down to its motherboard, unsolder the old jack, resolder on the new jack, and hopefully I have a working machine again after that without breaking anything in the process. Plan on it being at least 3-4 hours of work for a tech to complete this repair consistently and cleanly. There are specialty shops that only do jack repairs and some of their guys get pretty damn fast at it, your average computer tech does very little soldering and honestly isn’t that good at it.
The price of the jack itself is irrelevant, its having to pay a tech for 3-4 hours to do the work. I have had dozens of DIY types bring it in after they failed. It is not an unassailable task but its not something to take on on a whim. you will have 80-100 tiny screws you have to keep organized so you know where to put them all back and you will probably have disconnected 8-10 cables of various types, many of which have very fragile connectors that you have to put back to make it work.
That’s the PITA part. Depending on the particular laptop brand / model, this can range from a trivial disassembly to something approaching brain surgery. If it is a model I work on a lot, I can practically do the disassembly or reassembly blindfolded in about 10 minutes. If it is one I haven’t seen before, it can take quite a bit longer, particularly if it is one where the manufacturer / major brand (which are often not the same) treats disassembly instructions like state secrets and I have to figure it out myself.
Part of what the shop is charging you is a CYA fee in case the system doesn’t work after they put it back together.
If you have a local technical school / college / whatever with either an electronics program or an AV club, you could see if you can get a student to do the job for less. Many of these schools rely on their own staff to repair AV equipment (which tends to cost more and be replaced less often than their computer labs).
If you’re going to do this yourself, I suggest 2 things:
Take lots of pictures with a digital camera (and, preferably, be able to view them somewhere besides the laptop you’re taking apart)
Use ice cube trays or similar to keep track of which screws are which
It depends on the connector. Aside from the Dell 3-pin ones which are just intentionally unreliable (or so it seems), the jack can be damaged in a couple of ways - the plastic can get cracked or the pins or internal circuitry can get bent. Both of these tend to happen when the cord gets yanked because someone tripped on it, etc. Apple has a different kind of connector with its own set of problems.
I came in here to say something like this. I’m not a computer tech, but a friend of mine who is took four hours to replace a Hard Drive in my laptop (an HP Compaq Presario). Just to get at the HD required unscrewing the back, removing the top chassis, completely removing the monitor/lid, the keyboard, the speakers and several other bits that I stopped paying attention to. It took two of us and a screwdriver to carefully prise the chassis apart enough to be able to put the right pressure on the clips to separate it without snapping anything, and one of the speaker leads didn’t go back into the right spot when he was reassembling it, so the keyboard has a slight rise towards the top right corner where it sits up a bit higher. That doesn’t bother me because a) I know what is causing it and I know it’s nothing serious and b) he did it as a freebie, and you get what you pay for.
Receptacle breakage used to be a problem for us with older Toshibas (not sure about now). The problem for me was finding spare plugs, as the centre pin normally broke, meaning you needed a whole new one.
As has been said, if it happened to a company laptop, I’d just buy a new laptop. I’d probably take the broken one and fix it for myself on my own time for fun, but I’d be losing my company money if I did it for work, 'cause it takes too long.
Most laptop manufacturers are pretty good about providing tear-down and re-assembly guides on how to take the laptop apart. If you don’t mind doing it, check online.
I have to agree with you that the best way to go would just be to buy a new laptop. There are a few reasons why that won’t work for me:
As some of you might know from my previous discussions I broke my back at work and am now disabled. Needless to say, being disabled doesn’t pay well these days, so fixing when possible is always my prefered method.
2, My wife and I really like this computer. It is fairly fast, lots of space. I know you all are going to think we are crazy, but the thing we like most about it is the case where you put your hands to type. The finish is, for lack of better adjectives, shiny and smooth. Somehow it became our favorite portable computer and we have an emotional attachment to it in some strange way.
Sometime ago, I guess when I turned around 40 I suddenly started getting angry that no one seems to make (easy, user) reparable products any longer. Everything is made to throw away and I hate it so much. I remember being a kid and my father seemed like he could just about fix anything.
We have other computers, so this is for all intents a “spare”. If I can find an inexpensive way to use or fix it, it is worth a shot. If I break it during said repair, nothing lost really.
We have a big family. My wife and I are on our second marriage (and last if I have anything to do about it). I have two children and she has 4! Big family so even with two laptops and a desktop in our home there always seems to be a line for a computer.
It really goes back to point one. Before I got hurt I made good money. I had a lot of stuff and that “stuff” has to last because I don’t have the income to just replace everything. Maybe I am getting cheap, I don’t know, but if it’s broken and has a chance to be fixed, I will find a way.
Thanks to everyone for their responses. To the couple of computer repair techs that have responded I apologize for the Moron comment. It wasn’t a blanket insult aimed at the industry. I do understand that there are costs involved for a shop to carry out work. However, I fail to see how a shop can stay in business repairing computers if a relatively simple repair cost almost as much as a new computer. Why use their service? Seems as if they are pricing their service out of the market. The problem I had with the guy I went to was his (or what I perceived) was his attitude. He struck me as cold, unsympathetic and somewhat cocky. I understand that this job requires a bit of skill, but it isn’t rocket surgery. Maybe I am just grumpy sometimes. Anyways, thanks everyone.
Perhaps you’d like to use a computer like this instead?
The unrepairability of modern electronics has everything to do with making them as small as possible. That means integrating as much circuitry as possible, and making the PCBs as dense as possible. It also means eliminating almost all of the connectors. So, the upshot is, if even a single component fails, the entire device is trash. The boards are too small to repair by hand in a cost-effective way.
Also, modern electronics are so much more reliable, that it doesn’t make sense to make them more expensive just to make them easy to repair. Sure, one could replace tubes in a 1960’s TV, but this was a never-ending job, so it had to be easy.
Now, HP (and others) have had historical problems with their charging system, and they should have learned from their mistakes. Apple had similar problems, and replaced their physical connectors with magnetic ones, which has almost entirely eliminated this as a source of failure (there were some early problems with the charger cords, but this was sell never as bad as the original problem with the charger jack breaking).
