Question Laptop USB has no power, something visibly fried on mother board

[Andrewc99]

I just bought a hp laptop (14-FQ0075NR) from a pawn shop. Got it home everything worked perfect. I mainly will be using the laptop for tuning cars. I hooked it up to my friends car and worked fine with no issues. Then it just sat around after that until I finally go to use it on my own car and the usb ports don’t work. I plugged in a portable hard drive, nothing, plug in my phone and nothing. I did everything driver/update wise and nothing. I took it apart to find this. I called around and to have it be repaired is more than what I bought it for and I can buy a new laptop for the price. I’d rather just try and fix it myself because I’m more than capable and worst case I’m already prepped to buying a new one anyways. Problem is I have no idea the part I’m looking for nor have no idea where to even get said parts. Any help is appreciated.

https://imgur.com/a/u1jiZa3

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

I’d rather just try and fix it myself because I’m more than capable and worst case I’m already prepped to buying a new one anyways.
Look around the entire motherboard, back to front, to see if there's a component resembling it. If not, you wil need to source a donor board to help source parts off of it. Replacing the SMD isn't the only task, if whatever happened to the SMD was enough to nuke the traces on the board, you might need to also deal with masking the PCB traces underneath.

You might be better off in understanding how much to spend on the above suggestions and if a new laptop(not from a pawnshop) is worth it, at the end of the day.

 

[Andrewc99]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

I’d rather just try and fix it myself because I’m more than capable and worst case I’m already prepped to buying a new one anyways.
Look around the entire motherboard, back to front, to see if there's a component resembling it. If not, you wil need to source a donor board to help source parts off of it. Replacing the SMD isn't the only task, if whatever happened to the SMD was enough to nuke the traces on the board, you might need to also deal with masking the PCB traces underneath.

You might be better off in understanding how much to spend on the above suggestions and if a new laptop(not from a pawnshop) is worth it, at the end of the day.

I’ll take it apart more tonight and see what I can find. And yea I’m regretting my decision on a pawnshop one. When I could have got a new one for $30 more lol. Definitely learned my lesson there.

 

[Grobe]

Ok, hate to break this for you - but being able to repairing this one takes a bit of effort and knowledge: You need

• A complete service/repair manual from the manufacturer with schematic and full part list where the actual part name is mentioned.
• You need enough knowledge to know how the circuit works by reading the schematic - in order to get an understanding on all the parts that is most probably defective (because the burned one you see may just be a secondary damage when the actual short is another place).
• All neccesary tools for measuring, testing and soldering SMD components.

However, I don't know nothing about this particular case - other that there seems to be a transistor being burnt close to the usb connectors. Maybe you do indeed make it (if you have some basic electronic/soldering skills) - but you may have bad or good luck depending on the nature of the fault

Bad - unlucky can mean

• Actual short located in pcb layers inside the board - i.e. you don't have access and cannot repair without ripping the pcb open and thus destroying it.
• Secondary damage to a IC using ball grid soldering method <wikipedia>.

Lucky you, means

• Actually able to get an exact same motherboard model, replace that one component that is visible damaged and everything works - no secondary damage to speak of.

And yea I’m regretting my decision on a pawnshop one. When I could have got a new one for $30 more lol. Definitely learned my lesson there.

Well, if you got this for cheap I don't see why regretting, you're probably just unlucky and this kind of failures are not that common. There is always a risk of malfunction when buying pre-owned laptops. Next one may work for longer.