Question My laptops charging is oddly broken

Mar 18, 2019
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I've has an charging issue with my laptop for the past few weeks and I recently thought I fixed, but today things got even more weird.

So a couple of weeks ago, I noticed my laptop had stopped charging (The charger was plugged in but the LED charging indicator was off and windows said it wasn't charging). I tried other power-outlets and nothing worked. So I got my voltmeter out and checked if the charger was working right, it was. Then I checked if the charging port was broken by checking internal voltages. Everything seemed fine. I unplugged the battery and tried to turn it on with just mains power and it didn't work (suggesting some chip on the board was broken). I tried charging it again and suddenly it was charging again for no apparent reason.

The next day I had the same issue and after unplugging some things it started to charge again. It kept occurring, but each time it took more and more unplugging parts (randomly) of the computer and playing around until it started charging again. Until one time it just stopped charging for good. I took it to a shop and they said something along the lines of the power distributing chip died so I had to replace it. however it was soldered to the motherboard so they suggested to just buy a new motherboard (with soldered CPU and RAM for like $500). I didn't feel like spending that much on a 2.5 year old laptop so I did some more online research and stumbled along a similar issue but not the same where they said it was a software issue.

After draining the battery completely and letting all the capacitors discharge on the motherboard, the battery started working again. So I updated everything I could and it worked like normal for the next few days.

Until today, where it didn't charge and no indicators popped up like before. I attempted to do a similar thing and discharge all the components however that did not work. However what did work was powering on the laptop with only mains power, which made me think it was now a battery issue, however it also confuses me as it didn't seem to be a battery issue previously as without the battery connected it still didn't power up?

Thanks for any suggestions.

My laptops is a HP Spectre x360
 
Last edited:
Mar 18, 2019
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New battery just arrived and has the same issue as old battery, so either they're both faulty with the same fault or I have two healthy batteries. Most likely two healthy batteries.

If anyone can identify which chip is responsible for charge controlling on the motherboard, I might be able to replace it.
 
Mar 18, 2019
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I'm not sure what's happened now, the charging indicator light is not turning on at all. And the laptop won't turn on even without the battery connected. I think the power distribution parts have finally died completely or something.