Series 7 Chronos dead

Hi All,

I'm trying to troubleshoot a problem with my laptop where it will no longer power on at all. Short or long pressing the power button does nothing. When I plug the power cable in the screen will display the battery status for a few seconds, and the led comes on (orange, plugged in), so I know the screen is good.

I have tried pulling the ram, disconnecting the battery via the disconnect button, pulling the hard drive, taking the cmos battery out and holding down the power button with the battery disconnected in each of those scenarios before plugging back in and trying power. At no time does the blue power led light up, it's just dead as a brick.

Would this be the case if both the soldered ram and stick ram were both dead, or would it still light up in some way? I'm wondering if I should try buying a stick of ram before sending it to Samsung. It's out of warranty...

Does anyone have anything else I could try?

Thanks!

 

What does the battery status screen show? I wonder if the PSU is defective and the battery is run down and the BIOS gives a brief hint of life before shutting the system down due to low power. It's possible that the PSU is not completely dead but can't provide sufficient power to run the computer. Unfortunately, testing the power output with a volt meter is not a good indication of how the PSU will perform under load. Testing using another, healthy, PSU is the easiest way to check the PSU.

In my experience a RAM problem usually makes the computer properly dead and nothing ever shows on screen.

John

 

I have another psu. I'll try that when I get home, but I don't think that is it as I was able to use the laptop without power, and the battery seems fine/charges fine. Unless it suddenly lost the ability to charge which is possible I guess.

I think the battery status is separate from normal operation, as it displays when the machine is entirely off, just when you plug power in. So it could still be ram I guess.

Thanks for the idea, I'll try that

 

It is not RAM, please do not buy it. If the RAM is defective, laptop still powers on, but does not post. You would see your power button light up blue, screen backlight would turn on, but it would stay black and there would be no picture. Also the keyboard would not work if the machine does not post - caps lock/num lock would not light up if pressed.

If the laptop does not power on at all, problem lays in the mainboard, PSU or power button. If you have another Samsung PSU and another Samsung laptop, you can easily test the PSU and rule it out. If your PSU powers on another Samsung with the battery taken off, your PSU is fine. If another PSU powers on your laptop - your PSU is faulty.

You mentioned orange battery charging light is on when you plug the psu in. This suggests your mainboard or power button is faulty I am afraid. If you are confident in disassembling the laptop, try taking the power button assembly from the top case. Then turn if up side down, so you could press the power button. If you have a multimeter touch the solder on the opposite top and bottom corners while having multimeter on continuity setting and press the power button. You should hear beep on the multimeter if power button itself works. Alternatively (and this is not as safe method), you could do the same without a multimeter: touch the same solder points with a wire/scissors/anything to bridge them (as this is what the power button does when you press it), while having your PSU plugged in (no battery, HDD needs to be plugged in, you just want to test if it powers on and the button lights up blue) and see if the laptop powers on. This way you could test the power button itself.

I hope you get the problem sorted.

 

Hi all, My Chronos just lights blue power on led and I can see the battery led when charger is in and HDD led working. HDD and fans are spinning but no post and no display. What might be the problem here? Before it died it looked like it had loose connection somewhere cuz if you wiggled the display sometimes the sound just disappeared and sometimes it goes to top loudness....
Please help....I've disassembled it but can't see anything loose. Connecting an external monitor to the hdmi does nothing (thought maybe display was faulty)

 

Listen to the HDD for a minute after turning on the computer and try to figure out whether the heads are moving around whioch could indicate that Windows is going through the boot process although you won't see anothing happening. If the HDD spins up but the heads don't move around then it could be a POST problem as well as the display having a problem.

You can also try pressing Fn+F4 a few times with an external display connected which might force the system to use the external display.

John