Can a broken laptop charger drain a battery?

[gijoe50000]

So my laptop wouldn't turn on the other day even though the battery was about 80% full when I turned it off last. I plugged it in, still nothing. Then after ~10 minutes it came on and seemed to be charged to 96%. I turned it off and let it charge again for a while, and then plugged it out at the wall and left it until today (Cable was still plugged into the back of the laptop).

I came back today and tried the laptop again (assuming it was some sort of glitch) and nothing at all. No lights on the laptop so I pulled the battery and then plugged in the charger again and I get lights for a second and then nothing.

The charger reads 14.5v and ~1A, it's rated for 18.5v and ~3A.
I assume the charger is screwed so I'll get a new one but I'm just curious about the fact that it won't turn on, even though it was almost fully charged yesterday.

So.. as the title says: Can a broken charger drain the battery if it's left plugged into the back?

 

[cirdecus]

No i don't think the charger would cause this. It's either a rogue process killing the battery or a bad battery IMO.

 

[gijoe50000]

Battery is fairly new, only ~10-15 charges, and so far and it's been working fine. I doubt the battery and charger both died at the same time. Hopefully it's just my power/sleep settings or something.

 

[gijoe50000]

Ok, so I got this sorted and just thought I'd share the 'solution'. I took the whole laptop apart down to the motherboard and unplugged all the devices and ribbons etc, and put it back together and still wouldn't boot. The power leds would come on for a second and then go off again.

I thought the motherboard was dead.

Then I got a random notion about ram today, so I went to the laptop and removed a stick of ram and it booted perfectly. Very weird. I had tried draining all the power by holding down the power button several times and I had tried booting it plugged in but without the battery, so I had assumed that it was quite drained of power.

Can anyone explain this?