SZ won't turn on

I was surfing the web and all the sudden my laptop turned off. It's not a battery issue (I verified the ac cord works and the battery had plenty of life left). Nothing lights up when it's plug in and hitting the power button does absolutely nothing. I pulled up the keyboard to look for any obvious loose connections, but saw nothing.

Is this looking like a bad motherboard? It's a well used sz220, about 5-6 years old now.

 

Not sure why that would happen so suddenly.. but it sounds like you have a short of some kind. There is a brown ribbon cable that connects your power board (under your speaker panel, your power button and S1/S2 are connected to it) that runs to the motherboard. If this is not connected properly, then you will not be able to turn on the unit.

 

Any issues with it over the recent few weeks or months? Sounds like some mission critical bit of shiny has given up the ghost - normally motherboards that fail still draw power and so the lights come on and the board emits a series of beeps that can be used to diagnose the problem. If this isn't happening I'd initially suspect the bit between the power (battery or AC) to the board is the point of failure. Check it as per IHateMayonnaise's suggestion and see if that solves it. If not then it may involve replacing either the ribbon (though they rarely go bad) or the power connector on either side, which may be more trouble than it is worth.

 

Try removing the battery and running it on adapter power alone.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll check the ribbon cable out. There were no issues leading up to this happening yesterday.

I've tried all different configurations with battery/ac adapter- no luck.

 

I pulled up the speaker panel and the brown ribbon cable seemed fine. it was attached firmly in place. I have spare, working sz645 that i could try swapping the ribbon, assuming they are the same.

 

If you meant the brown ribbon from speaker panel to mother, I would say there are nothing related to your power problem.
In addition, SZ2xx and SZ6xx have 2 different ribbons, but look similar.
Find a good power adapter (from SZ640?) to see if your SZ220 receives power and charges the battery.

 

I tried that- nothing lights up, no blinking so i'm assuming it's not charging the battery.

 

Perhaps a graphics card issue? Maybe try booting in stamina or speed mode depending on what you're using now.

 

@Generic
OP's laptop doesn't get power, so it's not a graphics card issue.
Trying Stamina or Speed mode is just useless.