Laptop - Easy fix or trash?

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smizack

Supreme [H]ardness
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Nov 3, 2006
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I've got a Dell Latitude D500 given to me that doesn't work.

The battery is dead, and I noticed that when I plug in the power adaptor to the laptop it's (The power adaptor's) little green light turns off.
I've tested it with a known working power adaptor and it does the same thing.

So I looked on ebay for a motherboard wich I couldn't find, and ran across somone selling the power jacks for the mobo.

I'm not real sure if it's worth buying a new mobo or even trying to replace the power jack.

Any ideas?


Edit -
This is one thing I keep seeing about laptop powerjacks:
http://fixmymonitor.com/dcpowerjackrepair.htm

Edit #2 -
If anyone wants to charge my battery for me so I can test this further, I'd much appreciate it.
 
If the D500 is the model I'm thinking of (we have 500 and 600 series where I work - is it black?), the power jack isn't usually the problem. 9 times out of 10 there's an issue with the motherboard and it'll need to be replaced. I don't mean to rain on your parade, and by all means try the DC jack, but in my experience, that isn't typically the issue with these ones.
 
No, it's grey.
I'm sending the battery to be recharged. That will tell me weather or not it's the motherboard.
 
Alright, I got a new battery and it works.

Power jack replacement, or new power adaptor?
 
Do you have a local computer shop that you can take it to? If so have them test the Power Brick to make sure that it is giving juice and not failing a some point. Process of elimination will tell you either new brick or power jack. Replacing the power jack is probably not that easy a task and requires a very steady hand with a good soldering iron, you slip and touch something your not supposed to and you could fry the thing all together.
 
I'm not worried about soldering. It's just a pain in the ass.
 
I am guessing power brick. I had one off of an Inspiron 9300 have the green light stay on until I plugged it in to the laptop, then it went off. Dell sent me a replacement and it has been working fine since.
 
smizack said:
I've tested it with a known working power adaptor and it does the same thing.
Click to expand...

This statement would imply to me it's not his power brick. I was tipped off by "known working adaptor". He can test the output with a multimeter, at any rate.
 
Yeah, I did test it with another adaptor, but it was for a differant model laptop. Same style though.
I seem to have lost my multimeter for the moment, or I'd test it.
 
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