HP Spectre X360 motherboard burned, literally

[gadams65]

I was using my Spectre X360 the other day when I smelled what seemed to be electronics burning.  I realized the smell was coming out of the vent on the side of the laptop.  I was using it without power plugged in.   I shut down the laptop and then tried to restart it to no avail.  I also tried plugging it in to see if it would charge also to no avail.  No little red or white light by the charging port.  I decided to open the back of the laptop up and there was a burnt section on the motherboard right near the m.2 ssd drive.  Unfortunately for me this $1,000 laptop is out of warranty by 5 months.  Something like this should be a recall in my opinion as I've seen many other posts about these things no longer charging and requiring a motherboard replacement.  Rest assured if my house went up in smoke because of this thing I would have gotten more than a replacement laptop!  This is either an engineering flaw or some sort of chronic component failure.  I scoped the power supply with a meter and it's fine.

[kevin-t]

@gadams65

I have brought your issue to the attention of an appropriate team within HP. They will likely request information from you in order to look up your case details or product serial number. Please look for a private message from an identified HP contact. Additionally, keep in mind not to publicly post personal information (serial numbers and case details).

If you are unfamiliar with how the Forum's private message capability works, you can learn about that here.
Thank you for visiting the HP Support Forum.

[Matiagr]

Hi,

i also got the exact same problem. The area right of the M.2 ssd got literally burned. Any help ?

[RAHULSHAH1981]

I am in the same situation. We bought this laptop for olmost 1200 and we are 5 months out of warranty and our motherboard is also fried and no one is willing to help. This should have been recalled as i have read about it throughout several forums. Any help will be appreciated.

Thank you!

[kevin-t]

@RAHULSHAH1981

I have brought your issue to the attention of an appropriate team within HP. They will likely request information from you in order to look up your case details or product serial number. Please look for a private message from an identified HP contact. Additionally, keep in mind not to publicly post personal information (serial numbers and case details).

If you are unfamiliar with how the Forum's private message capability works, you can learn about that here.
Thank you for visiting the HP Support Forum.

[MochaJava]

I had exactly the same thing happen yesterday and posted on this board today.  keven-t responded to me as well, so I'm hoping that HP will step up and back their name on this faulty product.  Best of luck to you.

[gadams65]

It's been a month and I've still not heard anything from HP.  Now I'm seeing all these posts and am wondering if we'll all see any kind of resolution.  If chips on a motherboard are just randomly burning up then this is obviously a product flaw.

[MochaJava]

Gadams65,

It disturbs me that you've gone a month without a response.  I had a service rep message me a standard request for my information with assurance that he would forward it to someone in my area.  I'm falling behind on my work responsibilities already.

I feel like I'm reading my same post over and over again in this forum.  I checked their parts site for the motherboard and it showed zero in stock and a backlog on orders.  That suggests there is a ton of these things failing out there.  It may also explain why there are so few available from third-party vendors and why they are so expensive.

I'm thinking about the fact that if this motherboard/product system is failing at 12-18 months, it doesn't make sense to spend a lot of money replacing the motherboard just for it to fail again in a year or so.  The only resolution that makes sense is for HP to either replace the motherboard for free (and we just plan on having to do it again in a year) or they refund our purchase price.

I'm starting to wonder if this isn't an actionable failure on HP's part.  I haven't read a satisfied resolution of this yet.

[gadams65]

MochaJava,

As you can see I've gotten the same canned reply from Kevin-T twice now and still have heard nothing via email from HP.  I'll soon be filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau if I don't get some answers.

Unfortunately for me, I recently had a house fire and my Spectre X360 is more than likely water damaged so I'm sure HP won't replace it now.  I've actually just purchased an inexpensive laptop to get me by with my side business for now but would really like a functioning Spectre X360 because when it worked it worked well.

[MochaJava]

An HP rep ended up calling me the 2nd business day after I posted my issue.  He said he didn't see that this was a common issue (really?  ever used Google?), but that at a one-time courtesy he would have me send mine in for repair free of charge.  I got a pre-paid shipping box the next day and sent it to them.  About 3-4 days later it returned with a new motherboard and is functioning.  (All my data, programs and settings were intact.)  I'm just a few days into using it again, but it seems OK so far.

I hope you end up with a good resolution to your issue.