Weird -- no charging problem (TWO LAPTOPS!!!)

I was at my friends house and suddenly both my friends Inspiron 1520's no longer charge!!!

This is the weirdest ever. All 3 of us have the same laptop....all swapped chargers. Mine charges fine, but neither of theirs does now!??

What the heck could have happened?

They are working fine...just no longer charge! They are running out battery life as I type this.

 

Is the DC port busted? You may have to check that.

 

There could have been a surge in the power

 

That's odd..

Tried to reconnect everything? Unplug the cord from the laptop, pull off the battery, unplug the cable off the adapter(s) and the power cord off the outlet then put it all back on?

 

Its possible...but two laptops within a 2 hour time frame?? How unlikely would that be?

Possibly...but wouldn't that kill the power brick only? I gave them mine to test and it still doesn't charge.

Yep. My power cord and laptop are all functioning okay so I gave them my brick and nothing for either of them.

Weirdest thing I've ever seen!!

 

Are the laptops working WITHOUT the batteries?

 

With or without battery in, it doesn't charge. Turns on with battery in though.
Doesn't work without battery in, even when the cord is attached.
Make sense?

Light on the power brick is on.

 

Anybody know how the internals look at the power port? Is there a unit built into the motherboard or is it a separate device? AKA will the motherboard in its entirety need to be replaced?

 

Yes the chargeing port is built onto the motherboard ..

The whole motherboard needs to be replaced...I have seen this many of times..


Try the batteries in another laptop and if they charge your motherboard is bad.

Just try to get a new power supply in case that is what caused the boards to go bad if it got a surge on it. Just because the green light is on the charger and seems to work doesnt meen it is working correctly if it had a surge on it.

It may be putting out to much power.

 

Damn it That sucks for both of them.

We tried each others battery and my charger which works fine. Ok looks like the motherboard is fried then...

---

What are our options here? Both of their warranties expired. I can swap the motherboard myself. Can I buy the motherboard from Dell or do they require their own installation? I know they'd charge $400-500 to do it so I'm not sure what to do here. Both of them have exactly the same system in my sig. They loved mine when I showed it to them so they both bought the same as me LOL! So a new laptop doesn't make sense as its pretty powerful....Nor do I think they would be willing to buy a new one after this!

Any third party site I can buy the motherboards from or anything? I want to try and help both of them out the cheapest way possible.

 

http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_tr...ll+1520+motherboard&_sacat=See-All-Categories

 

Thanks.

How tough is a motherboard replacement on a laptop?
I've built more computers than I can count.....but most I've ever pulled the Inspiron 1520 apart is enough to take out the GPU.

Anything special I should know before swapping the board?

 

Dell, luckily, provides pretty detailed service manuals in the support section. You'll basically have to completely disassemble the machine to get the motherboard out, though. I pulled apart and cleaned/detailed an Inspiron B130 recently, and when I was done, I had a big old pile of parts on my desk. Using the service manuals, it took me about 45 minutes.

I can tear down and rebuild my old Inspiron 6000 in 15 minutes flat, though