I'm baffled by my Laptop's power issues

[JLT93]

This post has quite a bit of story as I wanted to cover all steps taken so that no important details are missed.

I'm primarily a desktop user these days so my laptop was turned on once in a blue moon - with the battery being completely drained between most uses. 

I wanted to test a direct ethernet connection which as my computer is at the other side of the house, I decided my laptop would be a good fit for the job. I figured I could get about 10 minutes of power from the device to do my test and turn it off again. I turned it on and indeed it turned on but there was Windows updates. Shortly after reaching 100%, the screen turned off and then the LEDs turned off after. This sounds like the battery was drained.

I plugged the charger in and I had nothing. No charging LED, no power LEDs... nothing. I took the battery out and tried again but still nothing. I held the power button for a minute or two to drain any left over power that could be in the system but with no success.

I decided to take the back cover off and have a look to see if I could find a loose connection or anything suspicious without taking the motherboard out. I could not. I plugged it in with the back cover off to see if that gave me any clues but nothing. I put it back together and decided it was one of 3 things: power supply, DC power jack or the motherboard. It's a 5 year old laptop, it isn't worth replacing the motherboard especially as it rarely gets used.

I replaced the fuse on the charger to no avail. I decided to test the voltage running through the power supply and DC power jack. Both were reporting 19.5V which is what I should be getting. At this point, I believed it was the motherboard. I reconnected the DC power jack and connected the charger. I wanted to make sure nothing changed as I was likely going to be selling the device for parts. To my surprise, we had a charger LED.

I screwed everything back, put the battery in, plugged the charger in and there was no power. I took the battery out, and there was power.

I'm baffled as to why it didn't work without the battery before but now it does? Any ideas?

[Echo_Lake]

@JLT93

Thank you for posting on the HP Support Community.

I appreciate your efforts to try and resolve the issue. As you've performed relevant troubleshooting steps and the issue persists and also the laptop not powering on, Hence, this sounds like hardware related issue, I would request you to contact our Phone Support and our Support Engineers should be able to sort this out.

HP Support can be reached by clicking on the following link:

• Click on this link – www.hp.com/contacthp/
• Select the product type.
• Enter the serial number of your device or select let HP detect your product option.
• Select the country from the drop-down.
• You should see the HP phone support number or Chat option listed

Please feel free to contact us here anytime you need any further assistance.