Battery disconnect and reconnect to trash a laptop.

I have a (non apple) laptop with "non removable" battery. One day, i yanked the AC adaptor from it, and the thing immediately shut down. It wouldn't restart without the AC adaptor.

In fact, it would only work from the AC adaptor and reported that the battery was completely unable to charge.

In my infinite wisdom, i decided that pulling the battery out would do the trick. A few screws later, i had the cover off and could unplug the battery from the motherboard. Reconnecting it a few seconds later did not improve anything. Then i decided to leave it unplugged for about 30 mins. Reconnecting it caused a pop on the motherboard, and a puff of smoke from one of the surface mounted components. Needless to say, it's toast.

Nevertheless, what could have happened? Could the battery be overcharged? Should it go anywhere near a replacement motherboard?

 

In the process of messing with the battery, it's possible that you may have shorted the battery, delivering a large burst of power to the board. Needless to say, I'm very sure you voided your warranty doing that.

 

Well, i was out of warranty anyway. But had i simply replaced the battery, then it might have been ok.

I find a battery short is probably likely. I was quite careful though - all i did was unplug the battery, and replug it. Perhaps the cable is damaged.

 

Anyway, so long as the battery is disconnected from the motherboard, it should be safe to handle the motherboard. Usually I'd recommend that you'd discharge static electricity before handling electronic equipment, but in this case it really doesn't matter now does it?

 

OOPs you let out the magic smoke....

personally i've not seen a notebook w/out an easily replaceable battery.... can you either take a pic of the battery you removed, or attempt to describe it's physical dimensions. also what was the brand and model of the laptop so i can do a bit of research.

later,
bigO

 

It was a dell xps 14z, and i followed this

Documentation

 

Did the battery - or connection to the battery - spark? Or did a different area on the board spark? I'm curious as to what was shorted.

In any case, what a bummer.

 

It was a part of the motherboard that sparked, and let out the fatal smoke i.e. away from the battery connector.