The Most Annoying Causes of Laptop Breakdowns in My Practice: Top 5 Problems

floating error



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What sometimes you want to do with a laptop with a floating error (picture from the Internet)

Probably, this type of error is familiar to many representatives of the IT industry, both programmers and electronics engineers. The problem most often is that the laptop works, but is buggy, and unpredictably. Now he can work without problems at all, he works for an hour, two, a day. And tomorrow you check it – and the same problem appears, or the laptop does not turn on at all. There can be many manifestations, including:

  • The laptop either turns on or it doesn’t.
  • The laptop turns on, but sometimes it turns off after a while (either after 5 seconds, then after a couple of hours).
  • Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t charge the battery.
  • The disk, WiFi module, sound, camera, etc. “fall off”.

Sometimes the cause can be located, sometimes not. In some cases, such devices have to be sold for parts, because you understand that you will now kill just a huge amount of time and resources. And the result, as mentioned above, is not guaranteed at all.

Of the reasons that led to such a problem, I can list a few offhand:
The contact on the display board came off a little, as a result of which the image on the screen might disappear after a while, or it might not disappear. At the same time, opening and closing the lid did not affect the process, but it was possible to detect the problem only after studying the laptop board, then the display itself, which took a mountain of time, since initially it was the laptop board that was sinning.

Cracked capacitor on the video card power line in a gaming laptop. Moreover, it was small, and the crack was so imperceptible that it was found for the third, or something, time. This led to the fact that the laptop worked fine, then it could turn off. Or did not turn on at all, and then started working.

Double-triple problems


This is the most unpleasant thing for repairmen who are engaged in repairs for money. A laptop arrives that does not turn on. You quickly discover the problem – for example, a broken input mosfet (I talked about them in the first article). You fix it, the laptop turns on, and then it shows that … a lot of things. For example, the processor was damaged, but not burned out, but partially damaged, so that when you try to boot Windows, a blue screen of death appears. Either there is no sound, or the video card turns out to be defective or something else.

As a result, there is little or no sense from repairs – the second or third problem may turn out to be more serious than the first. In rare, but extremely unpleasant cases, there are more problems than 2 or 3, and again the decision comes to sell it all for parts and no longer suffer.

Defective chips from China and beyond



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A picture from the Internet is a “crooked” processor that simply will not install normally on the board. These sometimes come from China.
Here, in general, you can open a forum on this topic – everything is so sad. An example is looking for a problem why the battery is not charging. It is found that the BQ chip responsible for the charging process has failed. You order it from a trusted, like, supplier. The chip comes, but nothing changes. You immediately think that the problem is not in the chip, you look for it, but you don’t find it. Then, having lowered your hands, you put, for example, a chip from a donor board, which was accidentally found in the storerooms, and everything starts working. It seems to be cool, but it took a lot of time.

And it would be fine, if only it was a matter of charging chips. More often, defective processors, GPU chips, hubs, etc. come. This doesn’t happen all the time, but it does happen. And then you have to start the process of returning, ordering a new chip, which also takes a lot of time. At the same time, you still have to prove that the chip is defective in order to return it, and this is very difficult, especially in conditions where the seller does not want to refund anything.

The most memorable case for me was not even with processors, but with mosfets. I ordered 5 pieces of mosfets from a trusted seller to replace the defective one on the board. Replaced once – the problem remained. Just in case, I replaced it a second time – again the same thing. I thought that the problem was not at all in the mosfet, I studied the board again, but found nothing. And only when I changed it for the third time – everything “started up”. It turned out that the two new mosfettes were also defective, and the multimeter did not show a problem during the “dialing”.

Microcracks in boards and/or soldering



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The picture is not mine, I took it from the network for demonstration

This is a separate song, from which, as you know, you can’t throw out the words. Well, when a microcrack leads to the fact that the laptop simply does not turn on, this is most often detected by pressing a certain area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe board. But in some cases, the crack affects something else, such as WiFi operation, sound, image, etc. In this case, you don’t immediately understand what’s the matter, you look for a defective element and you don’t find it. And only after a long time it becomes clear that the defect is somewhere in the board itself. This is solved by dialing the contacts and restoring the missing ones with the help of wiring. Sometimes the crack is too problematic, and there may be related problems, so it can’t be fixed. This is a relatively rare failure, but it does occur.

Filling the board with liquids



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Repairmen really do not like “fills”, i.e. laptops, phones and other devices that have been exposed to water, milk, cola, beer, coffee, juices, etc. In general, there is nothing to worry about if the flood area is small. All this is easy to fix. Worse, if it is larger, plus the user has not disconnected the battery of the flooded device. Most often, they try to do something themselves, then they wait another couple of weeks, a month, and only then they carry it in for repairs.

Well, then it turns out that the liquid oxidized everything it could, the contacts are corroded to the maximum, plus it also happens that corrosion penetrates the board. These are the worst cases as you can clean/replace components on the board. And then a little time passes and the laptop refuses to work – simply because the corrosion process continues inside, and you don’t know exactly where and what to do about it.

I had a similar case with a gaming laptop from ASUS. The flooding led to burnout in one place and massive corrosion in two more. I decided all this, the laptop worked, it was on tests for two days, everything was perfect. I ordered a keyboard for him, after a couple of weeks it arrived, and the laptop simply refused to turn on. Having checked the surface of the board, he did not find anything, everything that he replaced – everything remained operational. There were no new foci of corrosion. Most likely, the problem is in the place of burnout – I removed it, checked that there was no short circuit, etc., and then filled it with green paint – a substance that hardens under the influence of UV radiation. 90% that in that place there is still a small center of corrosion, which I did not see because it is somewhere inside. I still have this laptop, but, frankly, I don’t want to deal with it – I’m thinking about giving up and selling it for parts.

That, in general, is all that I wanted to talk about today – if you have your own cases, share, it would be interesting to hear.

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