Laptop died and didn't come up. Only blinking battery LED

[Ginipig]

I was working in my laptop with charger on like anyday, and suddenly the laptop goes off, as if I've done a forceful shutdown by pressing the power button. and that's it

It's not coming up, after pressing the power button. 

Only indication is the 3rd LED from left which is charging indicator is blinking rapidly when the charger is plugged in. But the laptop is not turning on.

Battery although old, was working ok, it would give me nice 2 hours operation and it was about 50% charged, when this happened

I tried hard reset, removing battery, etc. But to no avail.

Any clues??

[WAWood]

@Ginipig 

Some of the HP laptops won't boot with a dead battery or the battery removed -- I have one of those, ran into the same issue, and had to buy a replacement battery before the laptop would boot again.

And unfortunately, batteries don't degrade in strictly a linear fashion -- as they can drop to no charge overnight.  That's what happened to mine -- good charge level one day, dead the next.

To check out the battery, you have to be able run diagnostics. We have no way of accessing your PC from here, so we can not do that for you. You have to do it yourself.

You do this by pressing the Esc key repeatedly when rebooting and then, when the HP Startup Menu appears, selecting Diagnostics (usually F2) and letting it run.

If it is NOT possible to run diagnostics, or if that does not work, then there is NOTHING more you can do by yourself -- and there is NOTHING we can do because we have no way of accessing your PC from here to run diagnostics or repair hardware.

You will need to have the PC physically examined in a service facility by folks that can run their own diagnostics to determine what is wrong with it.

--------------------
If your PC is still under the original one-year HP warranty, or if you have purchased an extended warranty from HP and this is still valid, then having HP do this is an inexpensive option for you. In that case, you should contact HP Customer Support to see about having it repaired or replaced under warranty.

To contact HP Support see the following link to create yourself a case number, then call and it may help speed up the call process:

Step 1. Here is the link: https://support.hp.com/us-en/contact-hp
Step 2. Enter Product number or select to auto detect
Step 3. Scroll down to "Still need help? Complete the form to select your contact options"
Step 4. Scroll down and click on: HP contact options - click on Get phone number

Case number and phone number appear.
--------------------
If your PC is no longer under warranty, then it will cost you up front to have HP examine your PC. If you want to do that, you will have to contact an HP Repair or Service Center to see if they can examine the PC to determine the cause(s) of the problems, if it can be repaired, and an estimate of the repair costs.

Since you live outside the U.S., here is a link to HP Service Centers, by Country/Region: https://support.hp.com/in-en/service-center

Good Luck

[Ginipig]

Thank you for your quick response, However, as you said, there is little I or service center can do about it. The other suggestions have already been tried out. So, it indicated motherboard damage.

Specifically, blinking LED indicates that there is a short circuit fault appeared in the input power board and authorized service centers do not do chip level repairing. and the motherboard change would quote in the order of Rs. 10k.

Fortunately, in India, we have experts who do chip level repairing and I took help from one of them in Vashi, New Mumbai. He fixed it within 24 hours and I'm glad to share that I'm back to business, typing this very message from the laptop! Cost of repair was ~1500.

I'm recording my solution here, so that people do not waste their time searching on the net for a solution, as very little can be done by the end user when such a fault arises, unless you can troubleshoot at chip level. Well, I myself am electronics engineer, but I'd left this job to expert who are familiar with the circuits and have advanced repairing tools.

Although my Model number is Elitebook 2570p, this symptom may be applicable to wide range of other HP Notebooks.