P-7811FX - Won't charge / Boot (No power to laptop)

It appears that my trusty 7811 will no longer power on because of a power issue. Once the final charge ran out, I was out of luck.

The power adapter plugs in solidly, but there the power indicator light on the front of the unit does not light up. I removed the battery, and still the unit will not boot.

I even tried a universal 90W adapter (Targus), but there is still no power going to the laptop. Yes, I've tried different outlets as well.

What's my next step? Unit was purchased in August 2008. Any advice is appreciated.

 

DC Power jack might need replacing. you can buy one on ebay. You can do it yourself if you have the knowledge and tools.

 

I'm willing to go that route, even if it involves some soldering. Have you done this before?

 

No i haven't, but it might be a loose dc jack problem, have you tried moving the plug around in the jack to see if the charge led lights up?

you can either buy the dc jack from ebay and solder it on or buy this pcb module to replace http://cgi.ebay.com/GATEWAY-P-7805U-FX-P-7801U-FX-USB-DC-JACK-55-W2301-003_W0QQitemZ120522832079QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item1c0fb878cf#ht_2559wt_1165

 

Yeah, I tried the wiggle/jiggle, but no luck at all. I suppose it's at least worth contacting Gateway support about.

 

I have a laptop that was the same way, it would only run off the battery. I replaced a power jack and it turned out not to be the problem, which sucked big time because of all the time and effort it took to take the thing apart, order a new power jack, desolder the old one, install the new one and put the thing back together, only to have the problem not fixed.

Do you smell any burning odors from around the jack? My laptop had that, and I'm thinking that something else may have burned out other than the power jack, because the power jack was completely intact once I did finally desolder it.

I have found out that soldering extremely tiny connections in a laptop is very difficult unless you do it regularly or have an unusually steady hand, tons of patience, a good manual, and all the right equipment, including the right soldering iron, desoldering tools, and a very large magnifying glass.

I would definitely get Gateway to do it if the thing is still under warranty.

I would have paid someone else to work on my laptop, but it was given to me in non-working condition, had a hard drive that needed to be replaced, and a faulty screen. So for me it wasn't worth investing a lot of money in a laptop that was not worth much even if it power up properly, and actually would have cost me even more money to get into decent working condition.

I looked into replacing the entire motherboard, which no doubt would have fixed the problem, but laptop motherboards are extremely expensive. You won't find one for less than $150-200. So in most cases, it's cheaper to just buy a new laptop, which is what i ended up doing.

However if worse comes to worse and you are not able to fix the unit, you might want to hang onto it since some places will give you a $150 or so credit if you give them your old laptop when buying a new one.

 

OK, so after some more research: I moved to a Targus 90W adapter a few months back. The Targus adapter has interchangeable plugs, and at this junction the plug itself melted. I'm not sure if it was a short, but I'll be contacting Targus for a replacement.

Of course, I don't have another adapter to test this with, because my original Gateway adapter eventually became unusable after the sheathing broke open.

I did disassemble the 7811 nearly completely (thanks to this guide), and that was an educating exercise.

 

That would be great if it was just the power adapter. As you probably now know, laptops are not much fun to take apart and work on.

 

Update: Plugged in a Targus 180W adapter ($45 at Mwave), and all is well.