Power issue on an NP9150

My NP9150 will no longer run on it’s power cord. I was playing Skyrim for the first time in years. There was some terrible lag so I shut down the program. I received an alert that my battery was dying so I checked to see if the power cord had disconnected from the back. It hadn’t but I noticed it was hot. My computer shut down due to low battery and no corded power.

I’m trying to troubleshoot if this is a computer problem or the power adapter.

I tested the voltage of the adapter to be 19 V which is good, but I don’t know how to test the current.

When my computer is off, the front lights indicate that the computer is plugged in and the battery is charging. When I turn the computer on the left light iturns off and the right one turns green. My computer runs fine then shuts down once the battery is spent. When that happens both lights blink orange for a while and eventually go to solid orange. This is repeatable.

I know my battery has been unable to hold a charge for a year or two, but that shouldn’t cause this, right? My older sager runs fine without a working battery.

Any suggestion?

 

Have you tried flashing to a new BIOS/EC, I had a similar problem that was mostly fixed by flashing my EC due to it being corrupted which made my PC react really weirdly under certain temperature/power environments.

 

Thank you for the reply. Is there a way to determine if the embedded controller has been corrupted or altered? I am hesitant to mess with the bios or ec before ruling out hardware issues.

 

I would be hesitant to offer any tools to do so because of my limited experience. Someone like @Prema may be able to help if you could find/pm him. I noticed mine through recording symptoms and talking to people on the forums, also noticing that the fan curve on my pc was very odd and I had constant PC shutdowns due to apparent overheating despite recorded temps being well within spec.

 

After charging my laptop overnight, the power light indicators were green (the left, indicating fully charged battery) and orange (the right, indicating the laptop was plugged in).

Turning on the power the left light immediately switched off, and the right turned to green indicating the laptop was powered on. The laptop was running on battery power and the power management screen showed that it wasn't getting any corded power even though it was plugged in.

The only applications running were Thunderbird, Mozilla, and Steam. I exited Steam to save battery power and immediately the left power light clicks back on (orange). After 10 minutes the left light changed to green (battery powered up). The computer registered that I was plugged in.

What does this mean? Somehow some Steam prevented my laptop from running off of corded power? I turned Steam back on. Steam "updated" and my power lights are working normally and my computer is running off of corded power.

What does this mean? What should I do now?

 

Reinstall steam and see if that helps?

 

It's likely the brick itself, they are a common size, is there anyone's charger you could borrow?

 

Agreed, it does sound like an issue with the charger.

 

So you can be sure you need a 19.5x5.5mm barrel type tip with a voltage of 19v. If all you do is want to test booting the machine a 90W brick or above should manage, just don't run a 3d load on something like that.

 

Thank you for your thoughts and recommendations. Unfortunately I don’t know anyone in this area with a compatible adapter. This adapter should arrive on the 15th. https://www.amazon.com/UpBright-Ada...ter+np9150&dpPl=1&dpID=518Tq6zrTfL&ref=plSrch

I hoped it was the power supply, but the fact that turning Steam off and back on to solve this problem is strange to me.

 

Sounds like a coincidence, have you heavily loaded the system since?

 

No load. I did leave Steam, Thunderbird, and Mozilla open. At some time between now and my previous post my computer stopped drawing enough power from the power supply and shut off.

I guess the current theory is the power supply can provide enough current at 19 V to slowly charge the battery, but not enough to keep the computer running.

 

Sounds like the brick then, it's common that a failed brick no load it will show 19V then dip as it's loaded.

 

The new power supply was delivered today. Unfortunately it did not solve the problem.

I’m unsure where to go from here.

 

If I take out the battery, the left power indicator light goes out as expected. The right stays orange. If I try to power it on without the battery, the right indicator light flicks off the computer fails to start up and the right little clicks back on. This is with the new power supply.

I should receive a new battery tomorrow, the computer will run off of battery power, and when the computer is off the battery will be recharged.

Are there things that I should test under battery power?

 

Then it will be the motherboard power circuitry, this ranges from a cracked pin/pad on the input to a bad chip.

 

I was hoping the new battery would help my computer limp on allowing me to better troubleshoot the problem. Turns out my computer will not change it up. There is a faint buzz near the battery and the power lights blink when plugged in and powered off.

I contacted the seller to see what type of ac adapter jack the NP9150 requires, now i’m hoping that’s the problem as it might be within my ability to fix. Is that what you were referring to with al”a cracked pin/pad on the input?

Any other suggestions of where to go from here?

 

It needs to be inspected by a professional and not left plugged in due to fire risk.

 

I spoke with the seller of the laptop. They said that mother board is no longer available for the np9150. They said they could still take a look at it but there isn’t much that they could do. It cost about $100 round trip to ship my computer.

If this isn’t a DC in jack problem then it isn’t worth it.

Would a cracked pin/pad on the input be visible by visual inspection?

 

For the input Jack usually yes, especially if you wiggle it a bit. A good repair shop would charge around £50 here most likely if that's the cause.