Hey guys,

I've noticed a few people with problems powering their laptop, but I thought I would start a new topic instead of hijacking someone else's. My girlfriend's HP dv2560 is having an intermitent power problem. Sometimes the laptop will power itself fine and charge the battery, however other times it will fail to power anything, including the battery. When it does this there is also a very high pitched noise that comes from under the laptop keyboard. This noise changes if you wiggle the adapter around a bit, but it doesn't actually make it charge properly.

I've read that this is probably a broken connection on the motherboard itself, although I was thinking it could be the battery power switch (the bit that makes sure the battery doesn't get over charged). We've already had to replace the power adapter once due to a very loose connection. Could this loose connection be related to a break in the motherboard? And if so, what's the easiest and cheapest way of getting it fixed?



Cheers
Nahumi

Given the nature of the problem, and the possible serious effects that "could" come from this, you only have 1 option (unless your qualified to mess with electrics), take it to a reputable repair place, use word of mouth if possible to find a good one, but definitely check them out before approaching them.
This is quite a common issue generally speaking, and because it involves electrics the is the risk of shock and\or fire in the worst case, hopefully the fault is something as simple as a dry solder joint, in which case it should be a quick and easy, and more importantly cheap fix, because no parts are required, just labour and some solder, so hopefully not as bad as you fear, but until they get inside they wont be able to tell you, so I suggest asking for an estimate before starting, or set a limit to the cost, depending on the age of the system you may be better buying a new one if it's too expensive to fix, but hopefully not, but it's your safest approach with this, sorry I can't help moire.

I do this kind of repair quite often at my shop. It definitely sounds like a bad power jack.

8210Guy has made good recommendations because this is not an easy job and certainly it is not something that someone can do that does not have extensive experience with soldering.

One thing I disagree with though is that this might be an "easy fix." Once the jack gets a bad connection at the motherboard it will begin to arc and cause a carbon build up around the pins and motherboard. This is probably the noise you are hearing. That carbon build up makes it impossible to resolder the original connection. If your repair place even suggests such a thing, RUN!

The only proper way to repair the jack is to completely unsolder the jack from the motherboard, replace or clean the jack thoroughly (the carbon has to be scraped off the jack's leads if it is reused), and clean the connections on the motherboard either by scraping the carbon off or using contact cleaner (I always use a razor blade because it literally turns black and has to be scraped clean, carefully). Once it is clean, the jack can be reinserted into the holes on the motherboard and resoldered reliably.

Now, you or your repair place can get a brand new jack for less than $10. I am highly experienced at this work and it takes me no more than an hour to two hours tops to perform the work. For this, including the cost of a new jack, I charge $100.

I ALWAYS replace the jack, regardless if it can be re-used, because for all the work involved a $10 jack to ensure the job is done right is well worth the cost, rather than having me have to re-do the job a month later under warranty. I suggest that you insist the jack is replaced also with a new jack.

In either case, you absolutely cannot simply re-solder the original connection because it will not hold.

Well I said "might be" lol, purely because if it is as simple as a dry solder joint then it should be easy, just looking to the plus side and hoping for them, but with your experience in this area I have no doubt your on the money and excellent advice as usual.

Cheers for the advice guys.

We just took it to our nearest PC World, which was a bit of a mistake really. They came to the conclusion that the replacement power adapter was faulty, so they sold us a new one for £70, which is about $115 ish. The noise has definitely gone and the battery is now being charged but I'm not convinced whether it will keep working, so we've kept the receipt in case everything goes wrong. When it does I will be taking it a local repair shop instead of a chain store.

Ouch.. Yeah, it is very possible that just the power adapter is bad also.

However, I don't mean to throw this out there now, but here in the states I usually order original power adapters off of Ebay, new, for about $20-$30. Original HP branded adapters are easy to get. If you were sold a universal adapter they are ridiculously over priced.

Anyways, hold on to the receipt.

That's the very reason I said to check them out BEFORE going there, a quick search would of shown you what sort of a joke they can be in that store, sure they probably have some who know what they are on about, but many do not, the only time I buy anything from there is if I checked out the price\deal elsewhere before getting it, they often well over price things, they wanted £30 for an Ethernet cable (10m) and I got it for £10 online, if it were me I'd take it back and claim it did NOT fix the issue and get your money back (be prepared for a battle), and now the display has gone so it's going to be replaced with a new system.

Should they say about credit notes, or they offer to take the price off a new system, say the timing is not right and you can't afford a new system now, nor could you really afford the power pack either, and your not sure when you will be able to afford it, so credit notes etc are no use to you, and you only paid that because they said it would cure this, they will claim it did and this must be a secondary issue unrelated, but you say you asked online for advice (do NOT say here, they will see this coaching lol), and you were advised it was probably the jack (as suggested above by appleoddity), basically walking a tightrope between truth and the dark side, but not really lying, just getting justice for being robbed, should they ask to see the unit say you binned it as a new system when funds allowed made more sense given current finances.

Hopefully you will get a result, if you do then look elsewhere for this and you will probably get it for a fraction of what they charged, then in future ALWAYS check out places before using them, as I said prior word of mouth is the best tool out ideally, I hope you get a result, good luck.