Help me rescue old laptop

So, I've had my Dell C2D laptop for over 12 years. Just this past week, the laptop suddenly shut off while connected to the AC adapter. The light on the AC adapter goes out. When I unplug the laptop from the adapter, the light on the adapter does not turn back on. I had to replug the power brick into the wall outlet to get the power brick light back on. Is this a problem with the laptop or the power brick? Also, has anyone tried replacing the individual lithium ion cells within the battery casing?

 

i myself would like to get my 13yrs old Dell Inspiron 1501 turn back on as well... however, no matter i try to remedy the "paralysed" machine, parts by parts, components by components, it just won't light up. Dude, when it's time to put to rest, no matter what remedy u try u can't light it up, it's RIP to the system...

 

What model is the laptop?
Not sure if Dells used the infamous Nec Tokin tantalum capacitor, but those are always an easy fix and always make the system seem dead when they fail.

 

I had this with a HP (their PSUs are similar). The power brick is tripping because there's a short-circuit inside the laptop. Could be anything from the battery to a hard drive. In my case it was the GPU board (removable MXM).

Try to take out as many components as you can (including the CPU) and see if the PSU is still shutting down when plugging it to the laptop. If it still does, you likely need a system board.

 

Nvm. It appears the short circuit is caused by the power cord hanging off the table edge at the back of the laptop. The 90 degrees bending of the power cable seems to cause power interruption. The solution was to keep the first foot or two of the power cord at the laptop end on the flat table surface (instead of dangling in the air/gravity causing cable to bend).

 

Glad you solved it. I would've never thought about the PSU itself because I never had any fail in any way