BigLar

Since the start of the pandemic, I've been lending out some of my older laptops for kids to use for remote learning. They were old enough that they didn't have built-in cameras, etc., but I never needed that. Now, I guess everyone's using Zoom or the like, so not much demand for my pc's.

Along the way I've been fixing some people's laptops. I got one from a local guy - it was a Dell E6400 that belonged to his ex-wife. There was so much crap on it that he really couldn't use it. It also had a fairly small HD (60 Gb) with under 2 Gb left, so I suggested we upgrade the HD and do a complete new install. So we did and I did and it was lots better.

Then he told me there was a keyboard issue, so I checked, and sure enough there were a couple of "strips" of keys that were dead.

First things first: remove the keyboard and clean the contacts (my old friend Pink Pearl to the rescue). Voila! it worked! Or seemed to. A couple days later, it was acting up again. The choices were:

1) Replace the keyboard, or
2) The socket the keyboard plugged into was fu'ed and this would require de-soldering stuff from the motherboard - sorry, no.

So, I ordered him a new keyboard. If that worked, great. If not, dump it.

While waiting for the keyboard to arrive, I turned it on and ... it didn't come up. Just shut off after a few seconds. Uh oh. Removed the old KB in case that was causing a problem but no joy. Watched the cpu fan - it came up and spun for a few seconds and then shut down. It's dead, dead, dead.

I'm beginning to think it's not worth any more time, but does any one have suggestions as to what I should check before I just give up?

Loren Pechtel

Do you have a spare power supply? I've seen that bit of spinning up for a second or two on desktops, the culprit has always been the power supply was failing. Note that power supply testers would report it ok--the problem occurred only under substantial load. There's a short window in which the voltage is permitted to be out of spec, once that timer runs out a too-low voltage results in an instant shutdown. This is a safety measure, it kills the machine before it reaches the point the electronics become unreliable.

Remember in the old days how they told you to remove floppies from the drive before turning off the power? This is why--they didn't have that sort of protective circuit back then, as the power supply capacitors drained there was a narrow window where the machine could go wonky--and wonky could include things like issuing a write command to the drive.

BigLar

Yeah, Loren - I agree it seems like a power-related problem.

I tried it with just the battery, just the power brick (a different one) and with both. Same result - spin for a few seconds then stop. Screen never even gets to lighting up.

Unless I can spot something like a voltage regulator that's failed, I'm afraid it's going to the trash heap.

Error 601

My sister had a problem like that, there was a thermal sensor for the GPU that was reporting some impossible temperature that was causing the machine to shutdown. They replaced the logic board three times before figuring that out.

der_saeufer

Main board is fried. The only thing that'll cause it not to POST that isn't soldered to the board is the RAM, and dead or "missing" RAM should cause the system to beep annoyingly before giving up.

That laptop is worth maybe $50 on its best day in perfect condition, so it's probably time to scrap it.

You should still be able to get a few generations newer (6430, 40, etc) for cheap on eBay (though not as cheap as a year ago), and those are still quite usable with an SSD--if your "customer" needs to replace the system on the cheap that's what I'd do.