Laptop Refusing to Charge. RMA yes, fault opinions please

[ikonia]

Hello all.

While using my MSI S260 laptop it suddenly rebooted for no reason. When I powered it back on the laptop was running on battery despite having the charger plugged in.

When I investigated the charger, the green power light was pulsing between light and dark green. When I unplugged the charger from the laptop it went back to solid green - normal looking. Plugging the charger back in it went back to pulsing and no power was going into the laptop. I wasn't sure if this was a laptop or psu issue so I borrowed a PSU from my friends MSI laptop and it showed exactly the same behaviour.

This would appear to be a laptop issue then (another 8 week trip to MSI is on the cards by the looks of this.) Has anyone seen or is aware of this behaviour and/or have any comment to what should/could be the problem.

The laptop was working fine on battery it just doesn't appear to be able to accept charge. I don't believe this is a battery issue as I've taken the battery out and tried to run it off power but no power is going into the laptop, and the laptop won't power on.

Yes this is going back to MSI, and from the looks of it its a main board change, but I'd certainly appriciate your opinions on the fault.

thanks for you time.

[Splash]

Sounds like a dead charge circuit - we used to get them pretty regularly in the old Compaq laptops. New system board for you!

[ikonia]

Is suspected a main board change.

Thank you for your thoughts.

RMA waiting.

[Pob255]

Yep RMA it, they will replace the motherboard.

I've had this on acers and dells, failier to run off the power without a battery installed shows it's ether the charger or the power socket
a differnt charger rules out that, so the fault is on the socket, which is on the motherboard so new motherboard is required.
RMA if under warrinty, if out of warrinty your pritty much screwed as the cost for non standard components on laptops is staggering and generally best off buying a new one.

[IntaCepta]

I really hope you're within warranty.
Same thing happened to me, where it would charge occasionally, and progressively got worse until it wouldn't charge at all.

They said they replaced the charger unit. It seems they didn't do any work on the laptop itself, but i'm not sure of this.

RMA, they are probably used to this same problem with many laptops as I found it was a regular occurance with the Acer laptops/

[GoNz0]

just hope you havn't broke the DC socket, they can get funny as it takes force to break it.

[Splash]

Ah - I misread there... if you can't run the laptop off mains without the battery it could well be the power socket. All the best

[Pob255]

We've nto had any of our acer laptop charges die on us at work, what we had instead was the batteries refuseing to charge and refuseing to run off mains with the battery still inside the laptop. (would work if the battery was removed)
The cause, while it sounds crazy, was a static charge building up in the battery and is simply fixed by removeing the battery and leaveing it for a min or two before putting it back in.

This is of course usless to you as it's not takeing any mains power at all.

Have had this recently on a dell latitude, we have onsite cover and the engineer replaced the mother board and it works again

my oppinion: new mother board required, RMA it under the warranty
If out of the warranty, a new laptop will probably be cheaper to buy than to fix this one.
getting hold of a laptop motherboard is hard and I'm guessing around £250
(yes it's a crazy price, I've found that to buy the bits seperatly to build a laptop would cost you around 3 times the price of the laptop, only standardised bits are reasonable price and the hard drive, cpu and memory are the only standardised bits)

[redlight]

When I read this
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39426
I remembered this thread
Not much of help ikonia but interesting.
I am referring to the letter headed "intentional laptop design flaws".