Warning: Power Plug AC adapter potential problems.

This is my first post here, I've been a lurker for a while now, mainly searching up on reviews, but I have decided to finally make my first post on a very discerning matter concerning specifically HP/COMPAQ based notebooks that eventually have malfunctioning or broken AC adapter power plugs.

The story basically starts out about two years ago when I purchased a HP pavillion ze4100 series Intel notebook. I was perfectly content with its weight, and speed. That was until recently within the year my notebook began to lose its battery charge even while it was not in use. I would charge up the previous night pack it in my bag and the next morning I would run to class and use it. I started noticing that I would run out of power faster than ever. I had a feelign something was going wrong, but I couldn't pinpoint if it was because I was just running to many applications at the time. After a while I noticed that my notebook began giving out a discrete but rather bothersome electric static screeching noise, occasionally drowned by the increasingly loud fan :noisyfan: . But I noticed that this only happens when I had the AC adapter plugged in. Thats when all this went down hill, my notebook lcd would flicker constantly as my battery was charging and then stop charging on a very annoying cycle, in addition to the entire fiasco I had to jiggle the darn plug in order for it to even turn on in the first place. After a while I noticed that if I plugged in the notebook with the battery out it would not make the screeching noise but then I wouldn't be able to charge my battery. My notebook then became less portable because of this, but I was content because I would bring my Adapter everywhere I would go, and most places had an outlet in which I could plug in. About 1 week ago, my notebook took a complete dump. It is completely unable to turn on, doesn't make a screeching noise (strangely that is suppose to be a bad thing, but in this case I knew it was working at least), the notebook led that shows the battery being charged doesn't come on either. So I finally decided to do some research and find out if anyone else with the same model laptop had simliar problems, and thats when I ran into this website:

http://broken.typepad.com/b/2004/03/compaq_laptop_p.html

Here is where I discovered that a multitude of users of HP/COMPAQ notebook had all simliar symptoms and some even more drastic symptons. I'm at a piont in which I plan on attempting to perform the repair myself, I'm fairly confident about my soldering skills, and since I already have a v4000t I don't have that much to lose.

So I guess the whole point of this post is to warn users of potential problems that so many people have run into, and that if you have expierenced problems like those that I and other have described and griped about on this blog website I posted above. Also as an additive, if you have any information you would like to give insight to users that might run into this problem please do so as well.

I hope this opens up eyes and HP/COMPAQ and realize that there notebooks have malfunctioning/(cheap crappy power adapters[ I meant plug]) and maybe try designing a better way to get power to there notebooks.

I hope this helps all of you and good luck.

 

I actually did this repair myself with a part that I got at an electronics store. I was actually able to use the iron to widen the hole and better solidify the jack. In all honesty is was not too difficult.

How has yours come out?. The toughest part was that mine was actually broken off at the motherboard so that made things kind of difficult but I certainly learned a lot about repairing my computer because of it.