Laptop stops charging and battery light flashes purple

[fredryckh]

Ok so lately my Toshiba laptop, which i have been using to play Wow, had started to stop charging during my game. I first noticed this when i would be playing and get a notice saying my battery has 10% left, and when i look at my lights on the front i would see that it is showing it is plugged in but the battery icon would flash purple instead of orange (charging) or white( full). I would then check my power usage and see that just playing Wow was using 90W, which is 100% of my computers maximum power. I have had this computer for a little over a year so it is past its warranty, and i have never had this problem before, and WoW never used to use that much power. My specs should be more than enough to play wow, because i have a Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2630QM CPU @ 2.00GHz with 6gb of RAM and a GeForce GT 540M with the 1gb of memory. Even playing wow on low with my computer running in power saver, i still am using 70-80W, which is WAY higher than it should be. I am using the correct power adapter that came with my laptop, and i haven't had a problem with that before either. recently it has started not charging doing low power things as well, such as typing in this forum. If anyone knows why this would be i would appreciate it. My computer isn't getting hot and i have a cooling pad so i do not think components are overheating. The power plug also fits nicely into my laptop and it is not loose, and when it stops charging wiggling the plug doesn't help. It is a Toshiba P750 running windows 7 premium and i have all the latest updates and drivers. I also do not think this is a software issue because i have already reset my computer to factory default to try to fix it, with no luck. Any help would be appreciated, Thanks!

 

[fredryckh]

I should also add that if i have the battery taken out and my laptop has this "issue" it just turn off. Like instead of kicking off the charger and going to battery, since there is no battery in it, it just turns off.

 

[mace200200]

Sounds to me like it's a problem on the main board. The power input is soldered to the main board with 4 solder points. When they are constantly getting to hot, or they get bumped around to much the solder starts to lose its conductivity and you get problems where it won't charge as fast, or it'll only charge some of the time. If you know how to solder, it takes about 2 hours to disassemble everything, fix the solder joints, then reassemble everything. Other wise, many PC shops will do it but, since it's such a long process they charge you close to $100 even though parts are less than $5.

 

[Brett928S2]

Sounds to me like it's a problem on the main board. The power input is soldered to the main board with 4 solder points. When they are constantly getting to hot, or they get bumped around to much the solder starts to lose its conductivity and you get problems where it won't charge as fast, or it'll only charge some of the time. If you know how to solder, it takes about 2 hours to disassemble everything, fix the solder joints, then reassemble everything. Other wise, many PC shops will do it but, since it's such a long process they charge you close to $100 even though parts are less than $5.

Hi

As the owner of a Laptop repair company, that's a little unfair...the LABOUR is in most cases over 2 hours....

You don't do your job for free so why should a laptop repair company ??

And its NOT the job for an amateur to strip and rebuild a lappy... they RARELY work afterwards... we see so many after this has been tried, not starting or burnt out...

Take it to a PRO...

All the best Brett

 

[mace200200]

Yea I've done it once and it took me three hours, since it was my first time I'd think it'd take pro's less time. I'm big into electronics so I knew how to solder really well so I got mine working again. What I meant is, if you know how to solder, it'll cost some of your time and five bucks. If you don't know how to solder you'll have to bring it in some where.

 

[fredryckh]

Thanks for such a quick reply! And i have already asked around and found a good computer repair shop in my town. But i still have one more question. Would this problem reappear in the future or can they put a higher grade of solder on it? I would prefer to not have to "baby" my machine to make sure that this problem doesn't happen again ,because i like to "challenge" it, meaning i like to play a game in high while watching a video on YouTube on my tv. And if the solder is wearing out from being at high power for long periods of time, it almost seems to me like toshiba should have put a larger power supply in this. Because even when i am playing a game on high and the power is hovering around 100% my processor is still only at ~60% and im only using ~45% of my RAM, especially since the I7 is known to be a power hog that puts out a lot of heat haha. Thanks again!

 

[Brett928S2]

Hi

Solder doesnt wear out...lol

This is ALWAYS caused by user error...

Someone picked up the lappy and forgot there was a lead attached, or someone tripped over the lead, etc etc...

All the best Brett

 

[mace200200]

Yes it won't wear out itself, just be careful plugging it in and ripping it back out. As far as I've known there's not really different quality solders, some is just harder to work with than others. By law I think everything has to be produced with lead free solder now, a computer repair shop may or may not use the classic 60/40 lead solder. Even then though, lead free solder isn't lower quality, it's just harder to work with, they'll do it right either way so it doesn't matter what kind they go with, and you won't be licking your main board any way I don't think.