Acer Aspire 5742 stops charging after about 15 seconds.

Hi all, new here but not to Acer laptops. Having an issue with my wife's 5742 Acer Aspire that is about... I want to say almost 2 years old. It randomly just stopped charging and I'm not sure exactly why. It'll charge the battery for about 15 seconds, the light in the front comes on and it says "plugged in charging" but then kicks off. Also will not turn on with the battery removed and it is plugged into the wall. Jiggling the connector does nothing, pulling it out and plugging it back in will kick it on for about another 15 seconds and it turns off again. To me this signals a short or faulty component internally.

Troubleshooting so far:

-Swapped battery with the known good identical one out of my Aspire 7650
-Tested the charger out with my Aspire and swapped chargers
-Microsoft battery manager uninstall/scan for new hardware
-Turned off overnight to get completely cooled down and tried again
-Charged up battery in my good Aspire 7650 and swapped it to test out all other functions (the laptop functions 100% besides being able to charge the battery)

Anyone have any other advice before I start pulling it apart and looking for burnt/loose connections and start replacing FRUs(field replaceable units)? First stop will be replacing the DC power cord which plugs directly into the motherboard. There is also the discrete power module but I'm not sure what exactly that does and I don't want to start replacing units randomly. Finally, I can replace the whole motherboard for about $70 with an ebay unit but that is a last resort. And yes I am comfortable doing all this myself, I've had other laptops apart before to fix/add modules with no issues.

Thanks in advance.

 

If it works without the battery but plugged in- it's not a DC jack.
In such a case I would agree it's one of the components on the mobo. If you can get a new one for only $70 I'd do that.

 

No it doesn't work without the battery plugged in. I do feel like an idiot though since I realized halfway through disassembly of the 5742 that its charger is 65w and the 7560's is 90w. If the 5742's charger is flaking out it might be tripping a failsafe on the mobo and then the same deal is happening when it gets 90w of juice from the good charger. I don't think its the DC jack or there would be no power at all. Mobo... maybe... easy enough to replace, I had it totally out this afternoon inspecting it all over.

-Order a new OEM 5742 charger just to rule that out once and for all in case there is some sort of failsafe going off with a faulty charger and the 7560's charger
-New DC jack
-New Mobo

Had my 7560 apart too in the hopes of it being able to take a USB 3 board I got on ebay... well the solder points are there but no connector soldered to them and way too small for me to do it by hand... boo... Oh well no USB 3 but that's ok because its running 3 internal drives so I never need externals lol.

 

New charger came in, no dice, computer does not work with the battery out at all... Ordering a power cord right now, if that does not work then new mobo it is I guess...

 

Was the motherboard. $75 shipped new and still amazed at how cheap these Acer parts are and how easy it is to take these things apart.