D630 power issues.

Hi,

I have a D630 (T7300, 4gb RAM, 120GB HDD, Intel graphics) running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. It's over 4 year old so it's out of warranty. Looking for advice on what might be causing the problems. I'm really hoping I don't need a new MB, although it seems like I might.

The problem is that my laptop does not turn on from the battery alone and shuts down immediately if I unplug the power supply. I replaced the battery half a year ago and until a couple of days ago it was running fine, holding a charge for at least 3 hours, then one day it just shut off without warning while on battery and wouldn't turn back on until I plugged the AC adapter in. In windows and bios it shows up without problems. Everest says that the wear on the battery is 10%, and no other problems.

Sadly that's not the only problem. Around the same time the computer started to be very lagy. Although sometimes it runs fine. After trying to find what was bogging down the processor, I found that the processor speed was down to 800MHz from original 2GHz. Although it seems this might be due to miscommunication between the power supply and computer. The adapter shows up as unknown. I am currently using my original 65W adapter that came with the laptop, although it's connector has been resoldered after braking so that might be causing it. I have another 90W adapter which I use most of the time, but it's 1200 miles away so I can't test it. But this still does not explain why it does not turn on battery alone.

One more power related issue is ongoing. Sometimes when I plug in the AC adaptor or pull it out, the laptop starts a cycle of going to a black screen and the back to windows maybe once a second. It usually ends in a frozen a laptop after a few cycles and it needs to be powered down. It used to quite rare, but now it happens maybe 50% of the time, or did happen before the battery issue came up.

I guess I know where I stand with the adaptor at the moment, but what are your ideas on the battery issue and confusion of power supply state.

Thanks for your help and sorry for the long post, just wanted to give as mush detail as I could.

 

I think the power connector is not working right. If you have a docking station, this will be easy to verify (just use docking station for power). If you don't want to replace the motherboard and the jack is broken, just carry a docking station around with the laptop.