laptop died completely while working

[bou]

Laptop less than 2 years old - bought brand new.

While I was working on it today - web browsing, it suddenly without warning died, complete dead.

No lights, no sign of life. 

Tried hard reset by taking battery out and holding power button down for 20sec.

Laptop was charging while this happened. Wasn't completely charged.

My 1 year warranty has expired and wondering what options do I have to get this fixed.

Is it a charger/adaptor problem? Or is it just dead motherboard or hard drive or cpu/ram.

Any troubleshooting suggestions welcome. Any help from HP suppport welcome as well.

regards

[Huffer]

The most likely explanation is a dead motherboard. I guess it is also possible the battery has died and the AC adapter, too at the same time but that sems a stretch. Still, I would get the AC adapter tested to be sure it is putting out power. 

[bou]

HP Support Person I had a chat with also thinks same  - issue with system board. But I will have a technician 

look at it this week to see if they can isolate the problem to one partcicular component, CPU/RAM/HDD etc.

I guess if I had to replace system/mother board, then iot would be cheaper to get another laptopm instead.

Hopefully the HDD data can be salvaged as well. 

I check the power adaptor with multimeter - reads 19.5V DC so adaptor working all good.

[bou · Accepted solution]

Its a known issue with Notebook AC adapters. They shutdown if there is any hint of overcurrent or shortcircuit

and need to be reset.

Once the AC adaptor shuts down, it no longer outputs any  voltage to the laptop,

so even if you have your laptop connected to AC, it won't be charging.

And suddenly without warning the laptop shuts down when battery runs out of charge,

If you try to turn on the laptop on by pressing power button, it plays dead,

even when AC adaptor connected to AC inlet. This givies the impression that the laptop had died.

Solution:

Recover/reset adaptor that may have shutdown by pulling out from AC inlet and leave to chill out for 5-10 min.

The connect back to AC inlet and to laptop, and power on the laptop normally!

I have never heard of laptop AC adaptors shutting itself down and not delivering any output.

And when they do shutdown, laptop will run for a while on battery before unexpectedly shutting down with no warning

that charge is about to run out.

This only happens when I am using AC power from a certain building I work in.

So I am guessing there are some issues with power surges or short circuits in that buildings electrical wiring.

Hope this helps others if they face simialar problem.