So yeah, this clearly isn't a "gaming PC," but TH-cam's algorithm is unforgiving and I didn't wanna risk changing anything! And, for the record, my dad DOES count as a viewer! 😅
laptops are super useful if you don't want a traditional multi monitor setup, each have their own storage so you can split up workloads completely rather than the system if it isn't strong enough.
Most dell laptops I've ever used if it's plugged in, even if the battery is defective or even removed completely it will still run just off the power adaptor alone, so I knew it wasn't that battery from the jump.
I've had a dell boot in a limp mode over a bad battery and 3rd party power adapter that didn't show as genuine. It was extremely slow until I replaced both.
I was thinking the same thing, doesn't laptops run just off the charger with out battery. Also I'm assuming there's some sort of short or break around the charging port of the motherboard. Once he plugged it in bam, no good.
I have a work colleague who has a new Dell laptop (only a few weeks old), but lastly he had an issue for the second time where the Laptop would not charge or even accept power from the power adapter. So the battery will drain even when the power adapter is connected. ... the solution form IT was to disconnect the battery and reconnect it. Then it works again .... the question is for how long ;). I had many Dell laptops as work laptops and i must say i'm quite annoyed with them as every single one of them had issues. I'd love to get one with AMD Ryzen but neither Dell nor our IT will provide one 😠. I wish our company would not buy Dell exclusively😠.
@@Astravall That's a shame as a company they started out so strong in the late 90's and early 2000's. I remember the First Dell I ever owned, I bought it used and It was badge of course and had a Pentium 3 933 MHz and I had upgraded the ram from 256k to 512k, 512k was a lot for back then, it had a 10 GB Maxtor HDD and CD ROM and floppy drives, it was the typical business class computer that came with windows 2000 Pro edition. I added an APG GPU and that was a Radeon card but I can't for the life of me remember the model of it but it used to play Everquest, that was my first sort of make shift gaming PC, back then you didn't have many gaming PC's or custom builds, you just bought you a Business computer and upgraded it and added a GPU and a ethernet card, I'm 53 and I've seen the entire progression of computing, from the late 70's with Apple to the 80's with Commadore Vic 20 and C64 ( I owned an Atari 800 myself) the 90's with Packard Bell, the late 90's I had the Dell all the way up to current times and I actually built my own Gaming PC and I still love gaming. I think the first computerized thing I ever saw was the the 1976 Coleco Telstar Pong game and a bit later the Atari 2600, I got for Christmas when I was 7 and I was hooked on Gaming, I'm old as dirt! 😂✌
Hey I have a Fluke 87 just like that, setting next to me, its a great meter. its like 20 something years old, I think I paid around $335 for it. I use it all the time.
Lol, they used to be so expensive, especially fluke is the best brand when it Comes to voltage meters and such tools. Now you get the same quality at home depot for less than half the price.
@@JeffDeWitt so you have owned it since then 30s? I bought mine new have had it since. So if you got it in the 30s and you were a new born you would be in your 90s? Dont brag about something that someone else's took are of along with changing you.
Just a word of caution. Make sure if Bitlocker was enabled you have the recovery password. Dell/Microsoft have a policy of enabling Bitlocker automatically. If it was a good IT department Dell provides them with a tool to generate the decryption key based on the machine serial (only for machines registered to the corporation). Hoping for the best.
64GB DDR4-2666, bloody hell, that's more than what my HP OMEN has even with self-upgrades in it! I reckon a replacement laptop won't come with 64GB in it, and might even have soldered RAM... The days of removable RAM are a luxury as it means upgrades are possible!
For laptops that don’t power up I have three steps. 1 Remove the power adapter and the battery. 2 Press the power button several times to drain the power capacitors. 3 Plug-in the power adapter and start the laptop with no battery. If that works replace the battery and go from there. This has worked on many systems. Thinkpads, HPs, Dells, and Toshibas.
Hopefully it never stops! It's literally the only reason I even started watching Greg, and while his other videos are still really good, this series is still my fave of any other content creator out there.
I love that even though it was for family, and turned out to be a ''flop'', you still put it up. Everybody runs into that one system that they just can't get going, don't have the tools to fix themselves, or personally don't have the knowledge to do themselves, and I love that you are willing to show those as well as the successes. Keep up the amazing work Greg, and maybe someday I will see mine on here from a submission a while ago.
Have you tried testing the sensor wire on the charger? Dell Chargers actually have 3 conductors, one for positive, one for negative and one to trigger the charging of the baterry. If you only get positive and negative signal the battery won't charge and it will completely drain the battery. I fixed one with the same symptoms, and the issue was on the charger connector, that wasn't giving proper contact with the adapter, it worked fine, but wouldn't charge the battery.
I'm surprised you did not test the laptop without the battery in it. Just the power adapter first to see if was the power port or main board. Great video as usual
As someone that works in corporate IT, I would never advise to repair anything thats not your own. Just phone in that it no longer works and you need a replacement asap. That way you are safe on all fronts.
In my company, this would be considered Customer Induced Damage and they'd need to pay for a replacement. "Oh I tried fixing it myself..." Well there's your problem. You break, you buy.
I suggest that the culprit is the PS_ID circuit. The charger exchanges a data stream with the EC chip on the motherboard through the center pin of the charger tip, the power jack, and the PS_ID circuit on the motherboard. Most likely, the center pin of the power jack is broken or shorted to the 19.5V line. Second suspect is the TVS diode in the PS_ID circuit, which protects the MOSFETs and the EC from transient spikes.
Most of the "dead" laptops I work on either have a dead CR2032 battery, or a frozen BIOS. Disconnecting the batteries and reconnecting them (or replacing the CR2032) usually resets the BIOS, and all is well. Unfortunately for Greg, it seems to me that the PS_ID circuit is faulty in this laptop, so the EC chip refuses to charge the battery from the charger, since the EC chip doesn't know the wattage of the charger.
The NVMe Windows laptop boot drive should be able to be transferred to a regular desktop computer, while you're waiting on a possible replacement laptop. The central issue is probably the loose/damaged plug-in power adapter port. May still be fixable by soldering in a replacement port. Might consider obtaining an external USB 3.0 NVMe adapter housing, in case of the need to copy data off.
It's the AC Power port, some dell have one that is replaceable, others are soldered to the main board. The battery was only lasting about 45 minutes because it was not getting the voltage needed to charge it to 100% ( could also have been a bad battery as well). For you own knowledge, if the laptop does not run from the AC port, with or without a battery it should lead you to only two possible culprits, the power brick, or the power port. The machine powering on from the juice left in the new battery, proved its not the main board.
as loose as the port was I would guess a short at the port , might have killed it- I have seen it a few times, had it happen to me once -maybe the PS ID chip was shorted - just guessing
As with others, I'm surprised you jumped to the battery as the problem. I don't disagree that the computer needed a new one for other reasons, but if a laptop won't boot when plugged into the wall the problem's occurring before it even gets to the battery.
I was suprised you landed on the Battery as the issue, my bet would have been an mainboard issue tbh xD Because the issue you are getting are something i would suspect with an issue on the mainboard, but not with an battery issue. the laptop should still be able to boot ALWAYS when plugged in even if battery is dead, if it cant it aint the battery.
Yes. My first gaming PC was a laptop, and had it for 8 years. The baterry eventually died and had to use it connected all the time. I also knew the battery was not the issue.
I used to test ex-leased computers and while I didn't work on laptops I did know from the laptop line workers that they would power up the laptop, do their tests and let it charge, then disconnect the lead of the charger to see if the battery held a charge.
If you check the charging circuit with the multimeter, you might find a shorted high side MOSFET pushing too much current from the main power rail into the battery causing it to lock itself as protective measure.
Theres a reason average refresh time is about 3 years on hardware... Also if that is an external company's laptop. You can get in serious trouble for working on it unauthorized by the company.
I had a similar problem with a DELL laptop and also a Lenovo. It turned out to be the charge connector that was the problem. Still had to replace the laptops since it would be cheaper than sending it out etc.
Like others have pointed out, I’ve never come across a laptop that doesn’t work with the power cable in, even if the battery is completely dead, or even removed. So I figured the issue wasn’t with the battery.
For large company laptops are usually disk is encrypted and when warranty is over they recommend to replace laptop soon as possible and when it breaks after warranty they just replace it.
After replacing the battery without connecting power adaptor should have run Diagnostic test to ensure other components are fine , then exact problem can be isolated.
I had something similar happen with my mother's laptop. Seemed like odd power issues. Changed the battery, and nothing. After hours of following the flow of power with a multimeter, turns out the SATA M.2 port had fried. Took the drive out, installed a 2.5" SATA drive into the other port, and it posted. 🤷♂🤣
Like one of my favorite actors says:”A man has to know his limitations”. As you said, it’s better to walk away, then to go on and create more problems. Good decision. Love your show. Greetings from a Canadian born Dutchman spending his retirement in beautiful France. Keep up the the good work and keep a close eye on that junction box switch.
I know with HP laptops a faulty battery won't prevent a laptop from starting up if it's plugged into the power and I would have assumed Dell laptops to be the same. in fact, you can remove the battery all together and the laptop will run normally when plugged into the power. If a HP laptop doesn’t startup when plugged into the power, I wouldn’t have even bothered buying a replacement battery.
Laptops are always the worse to troubleshoot, battery failure is such a common issue and it never seems to work out when you straight up replace the battery, I personally lost 2 laptops to dodgy batteries and their connectors. Glad you did a thorough test Gregg.
Did you ever try charging with a high power USB C charger? It would likely be different circuitry than the main charger port. It might get enough juice into the Dell battery to turn on briefly and backup files.
Yeah, my go to on a power issue is always the charger ports when it comes to laptops. Blue screens, clogged CPU overheating from people using them on their laps and sucking in dust and debris. But a laptop will run on the charger, even without a battery. Likely all you need is a new charger cable from the back of the computer to the mainboard. Cords get jammed all of the time and get loose and they often lose connection or break off partially. If you buy one, get it directly from Dell if you can. Used ones are often junk and are ready to beak.
I have a company laptop, and I'm a pc geek too, but I wouldn't have even bothered with the battery before engaging IT. The corpo techs want you to do things their way, and a good chunk of thriving in corpo culture is avoiding blame and criticism.
Maybe its some older electrolytic capacitor in the power delivery part of the mainboard, not holding its capacity anymore. This could explain the turning off after a few seconds, since the voltages are more unstable with "broken" capacitors. But it could also be something totally else.
Sounds like the infamouse dell power management board. I do not know if they still make it a simple swap out process or if they now solder it to the motherboard. The dell laptops of the 90's 2000's it was as simple as swaping a attached board via a ribon cable or wire.
Might have seen a lot of use and time, but that Fluke is far from old skool. If you want stuff measured properly (when handheld is required or simply done fast) you grab a unit of that sort! Fantastic instruments
You need to do a hardware reset. Unplug it from power, and hold the power button down for 30 seconds. If it turns on before 30, release, and rehold the power button down for another 30 seconds. Fixed many dells with this issue.
Some tips from someone who does this on a nearly daily basis. Before ordering a new battery, try pulling the battery out completely, plug in, and see if it runs. If it does, then you've isolated the battery as the issue. If not, then chances are really high that the battery is not the issue. For Dell and HP, both have pretty decent diagnostics built in (F12 for Dell, F2 for HP) complete with a power delivery/battery check. Lastly, regards to the data saving, make sure the data drive is NOT bitlocked by Microsoft (they like to turn it on by default). Also some laptops, especially of that age have Optane drives, not easily readable outside of the system they are built in.
I feel your pain. I've been a professional automotive technician for over 20 years. I've bought my own shop. I've worked for multiple domestic and European brands over my career. Whenever I get a call from my father to help him with his vehicles(he's always fixed his own vehicles, but he's not a mechanic. He's a Biomedical Technician), my brain jumps out of my skull and the repairs always seem to go sideways!
I had a Dell Precision a little older than that one and it recently died on me too. Mine wouldn't light up or power on at all after about 6-7 years, even when plugged in and battery removed.
Some devices, such as my previous phone and an old lenovo lappy which died a few months ago, if the battery had a less than 5% charge they will not power on from powered off state even while plugged in. SteamDeck is the same way also. It's possible the adapter cooked the battery.
@@GregSalazar These laptops will run with no battery at all but need a signal from the center pin to receive power. It's common for the pin to break off inside the plugs due to bad alignment from a loose jack and then the power supply is completely useless. Or the jack itself wears out enough or breaks internally and can't communicate with the charger. Having the correct voltage at the board does nothing without it receiving the correct signal to enable power delivery. My money is on the jack being bad seeing how loose it was but broken pin in the adapter is more common. Also the battery is probably totally fine and just went into protection mode when it died and just needs to be recharged to work again.
I had the exact same issue on an Asus laptop (About 4 years ago), so changed out all parts 1 by 1 was was really shocked to find that the hard drive was the issue, as soon as I replaced it, everything worked as normal and problem has not replicated since then, my wife is now using that laptop fine.
"...whenever you don't know how to fix something, don't act like you do, you can cause a lot more damage..." Some really good advise right there. Thanks, Greg. Love the FoF series, keep them coming.
Greg, please tell me you held the power button down for 30 seconds (plugged in, off on the wall) before you changed the battery to power cycle it? I had a friend with exactly the same laptop last month with this issue and that cured it totally.
That vip-scdkey is a godsend. Using a slightly newer Dell company laptop and it's nice to use. It surprised me to see it could go up to 64gb RAM. Shame about that one but letting their IT take it back as it is is smart. They'll have a business deal most likely.
Great content, I enjoy watching your series. I do have a question though…. Why do you rotate items when you hold them for a video shot? Just a personal query (I know I’m not the internet police, so genuinely asking why). Thanks again for the content!
As someone who works with Dell laptops. Because of the age of the laptop with this kind of issue, we would replace this with a newer unit. As a business we look at the time taken for said IT technician to try to fix a 5.5-year-old laptop only to possibly have issues down the road only costing more time, best practice is to flat out replace the laptop with a newer laptop. That is how businesses work. It does sound as an environmental standpoint to fix the laptop, but you have to think how much of the IT technicas's time is used up trying to fix it and as this is a work laptop how much time the user (In this case, Greg's dad) is down a work machine while the repair is ongoing, just the way how it works in business. Now if this had been a personal laptop the practices would be much different.
My only laptop that I ordered a new battery for I ordered a generic one off Newegg and it only lasted less than a year before it failed to hold a charge. I actually got the manufacturer to replace it, but that one lasted a little over a year before the same problems. Compared to the original battery from Toshiba, that lasted at least 5 years (I was only really using it for Microsoft Office for school, web browsing, and Runescape, so it did all I needed it to). Don't remember how much an OEM battery cost or if I even found one for sale, but sometimes OEM feels worth it.
I'm not exaggerating, but nearly every dell laptop I've had or family members have had ---- ALL had batteries go bad at some point and wouldn't charge. Terrible QC. Yes, some should fail, and no, a battery shouldn't last forever... but their batteries are sorely lacking. So yeah, woulda thought that was a good guess.
I repaired many Dell laptops in my company. Though this issue is rare, it's not uncommon that the power distribution circuit got toasted. For me, the very first thing I check is short circuit (test the 19.5V pin to ground). There's also a way to clear stray current according to Dell's technician, which is to remove the main battery, CMOS battery and power adapter, then press the power button for 30 seconds or more. Not sure if this'll work but it usually has a chance to fix the issue. Lastly, tell that company to get Lenovo Thinkpad or Thinkbook. Dell quality is quite poor these days and expensive for the things they provide.
My guess is the (loose) power connector is flaky. When you plugged in/jiggled the power supply into the loose power connector you caused a (partial?) short. Maybe something like a solder flaking off a broken solder joint or even something crazy like tin whiskers. The short might have cause the new battery to disconnect itself to prevent catching on fire. Perhaps the old battery has been dealing with occasional shorts from the bad connector for a while which has hastened its death.
If you have a 12v lithium based power tool you can try bench charging the new battery with some jumper wires. It looked pretty dead and then you did power cycles and ran it for 15 mins. (Most of those batteries come with a note that says to charge it up fully before use. It is much safer to ship when they aren't fully charged. And they can sit around and lose charge). The Battery protection circuit will cut all power when you fully discharge it. A little voltage will wake it up.
Life makes strange turns. Here we can see Greg as a grown man sitting at his dads desk messing around with his dads computer, looking like an innocent child again.
I have an older ASUS that does this exact same thing. It hadn't been used in a while and started it up one day to use it. After it updated it worked fine and I shut it off. Went back to use it a couple hours later and nothing but fans and keyboard lights. Replaced battery and tried different memory configs and nothing changes. Also pulled out hard drives.
the power brick has a known failure with the center pin when its damage dont charge the battery only deliver energy conected thats all the other known issue its the lack of cooling dell always fails on that... if change of laptop put a thermal pad on the m.2 i did the same with my vostro and update the bios theres a lot of new revisions and they install without warning from the windows update
Had the same issue with an ASUS laptop. The board got fried when I was charging. I thought it was the charger, but the charger still works and using it now, as the original charger of my new laptop has a broken cable, and since it’s a company machine, I can resolder the cable. Although on my never laptop, the charging port was loose and moving - turned out the connector’s solder started to wear off. A quick resoldering fixed that computer
Honestly probably something with the charging circuit on the board. Laptop should power in even with a dead battery when plugged into the wall. I have very seldomly ran into a laptop I had a bad battery that would not power from the adapter
it could be that the signal pin in the power cord gives 20v instead of 5v and that could fry a chip ion the laptop easy fix but you have to do some soldering and replace a litlle transistor
Some current dell laptops 2021+, have some sort of security chip in the battery that prevents you from using a third party battery. I do not know a work around for this. I've replaced batteries on dells with 3rd party ones for 10+ years at my IT job.
That power connection into the laptop, being 'floppy' might have been a factor? If it was connecting and disconnecting, shorting or whatever, that could cause issues.
![เป็นไปได้ไหม - WanMai [Teaser] | 05-12-24](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/P5Uto6e453w/mqdefault.jpg)
So yeah, this clearly isn't a "gaming PC," but TH-cam's algorithm is unforgiving and I didn't wanna risk changing anything! And, for the record, my dad DOES count as a viewer! 😅
You can also get a usb thumb drive for the M.2 card
laptops are super useful if you don't want a traditional multi monitor setup, each have their own storage so you can split up workloads completely rather than the system if it isn't strong enough.
probably a bad charging controller on the mobo or a daughter board.
This is a great opportunity to do a collab with The Greatest Technicial that's ever lived @SalemTechsperts
It could be the "Power Switch".
Greg's dad, the original customer
next video " Bulding my Dad a gaming Pc"!!
"Greg, why is Solitaire running so fast?"
😂👌
A "work pc"
Now, that is a great idea. Dad's laptop would make an excellent stand for his new monitor.
Hahahaha
Most dell laptops I've ever used if it's plugged in, even if the battery is defective or even removed completely it will still run just off the power adaptor alone, so I knew it wasn't that battery from the jump.
I've had a dell boot in a limp mode over a bad battery and 3rd party power adapter that didn't show as genuine. It was extremely slow until I replaced both.
I was thinking the same thing, doesn't laptops run just off the charger with out battery. Also I'm assuming there's some sort of short or break around the charging port of the motherboard. Once he plugged it in bam, no good.
I have a work colleague who has a new Dell laptop (only a few weeks old), but lastly he had an issue for the second time where the Laptop would not charge or even accept power from the power adapter. So the battery will drain even when the power adapter is connected. ... the solution form IT was to disconnect the battery and reconnect it. Then it works again .... the question is for how long ;). I had many Dell laptops as work laptops and i must say i'm quite annoyed with them as every single one of them had issues. I'd love to get one with AMD Ryzen but neither Dell nor our IT will provide one 😠. I wish our company would not buy Dell exclusively😠.
Same. Immediately I knew it was gonna be a short on the board.
@@Astravall That's a shame as a company they started out so strong in the late 90's and early 2000's. I remember the First Dell I ever owned, I bought it used and It was badge of course and had a Pentium 3 933 MHz and I had upgraded the ram from 256k to 512k, 512k was a lot for back then, it had a 10 GB Maxtor HDD and CD ROM and floppy drives, it was the typical business class computer that came with windows 2000 Pro edition. I added an APG GPU and that was a Radeon card but I can't for the life of me remember the model of it but it used to play Everquest, that was my first sort of make shift gaming PC, back then you didn't have many gaming PC's or custom builds, you just bought you a Business computer and upgraded it and added a GPU and a ethernet card, I'm 53 and I've seen the entire progression of computing, from the late 70's with Apple to the 80's with Commadore Vic 20 and C64 ( I owned an Atari 800 myself) the 90's with Packard Bell, the late 90's I had the Dell all the way up to current times and I actually built my own Gaming PC and I still love gaming. I think the first computerized thing I ever saw was the the 1976 Coleco Telstar Pong game and a bit later the Atari 2600, I got for Christmas when I was 7 and I was hooked on Gaming, I'm old as dirt! 😂✌
Dad's oldschool $500 multimeter. I can see where you get the tech enthusiasm from.
Hey I have a Fluke 87 just like that, setting next to me, its a great meter. its like 20 something years old, I think I paid around $335 for it. I use it all the time.
Lol, they used to be so expensive, especially fluke is the best brand when it Comes to voltage meters and such tools. Now you get the same quality at home depot for less than half the price.
Fluke meters are extremely reliable.
@@tomr3422 That's not old school, my Simpson 260, the original multimeter, introduced in the 30's, now THAT'S old school.
@@JeffDeWitt so you have owned it since then 30s? I bought mine new have had it since. So if you got it in the 30s and you were a new born you would be in your 90s? Dont brag about something that someone else's took are of along with changing you.
Just a word of caution. Make sure if Bitlocker was enabled you have the recovery password. Dell/Microsoft have a policy of enabling Bitlocker automatically. If it was a good IT department Dell provides them with a tool to generate the decryption key based on the machine serial (only for machines registered to the corporation). Hoping for the best.
I love the fact that the laptop has 32+ gb of ram “for work” 😅
2x 32GB sticks so 64GB in total
@@Pasi123 maybe, but he could be running mixed amounts.
@@coolbusterreal2736 Both of the sticks are visible in the video. At 10:30 Greg removed the lower stick and the upper stick is visible at 11:19
You've never heard of VMs, have you?
There are plenty of reasons to have 64gb for WORK laptops.
64GB DDR4-2666, bloody hell, that's more than what my HP OMEN has even with self-upgrades in it!
I reckon a replacement laptop won't come with 64GB in it, and might even have soldered RAM... The days of removable RAM are a luxury as it means upgrades are possible!
Diagnosing the real cause is not a Flop. Not having a diagnosis for failure is a Flop! It was definitely the mobo.
For laptops that don’t power up I have three steps. 1 Remove the power adapter and the battery. 2 Press the power button several times to drain the power capacitors. 3 Plug-in the power adapter and start the laptop with no battery. If that works replace the battery and go from there. This has worked on many systems. Thinkpads, HPs, Dells, and Toshibas.
Cool how this series is still going!
Hopefully it never stops! It's literally the only reason I even started watching Greg, and while his other videos are still really good, this series is still my fave of any other content creator out there.
I love that even though it was for family, and turned out to be a ''flop'', you still put it up. Everybody runs into that one system that they just can't get going, don't have the tools to fix themselves, or personally don't have the knowledge to do themselves, and I love that you are willing to show those as well as the successes. Keep up the amazing work Greg, and maybe someday I will see mine on here from a submission a while ago.
Have you tried testing the sensor wire on the charger? Dell Chargers actually have 3 conductors, one for positive, one for negative and one to trigger the charging of the baterry. If you only get positive and negative signal the battery won't charge and it will completely drain the battery. I fixed one with the same symptoms, and the issue was on the charger connector, that wasn't giving proper contact with the adapter, it worked fine, but wouldn't charge the battery.
Yup that sense pin may not have a good solder join with the motherboard
I'm surprised you did not test the laptop without the battery in it. Just the power adapter first to see if was the power port or main board. Great video as usual
As someone that works in corporate IT, I would never advise to repair anything thats not your own. Just phone in that it no longer works and you need a replacement asap. That way you are safe on all fronts.
Probably is just for the views. who knows!
In my company, this would be considered Customer Induced Damage and they'd need to pay for a replacement. "Oh I tried fixing it myself..." Well there's your problem. You break, you buy.
Smart man right there taping that camera up
I suggest that the culprit is the PS_ID circuit. The charger exchanges a data stream with the EC chip on the motherboard through the center pin of the charger tip, the power jack, and the PS_ID circuit on the motherboard. Most likely, the center pin of the power jack is broken or shorted to the 19.5V line. Second suspect is the TVS diode in the PS_ID circuit, which protects the MOSFETs and the EC from transient spikes.
Most of the "dead" laptops I work on either have a dead CR2032 battery, or a frozen BIOS. Disconnecting the batteries and reconnecting them (or replacing the CR2032) usually resets the BIOS, and all is well. Unfortunately for Greg, it seems to me that the PS_ID circuit is faulty in this laptop, so the EC chip refuses to charge the battery from the charger, since the EC chip doesn't know the wattage of the charger.
I do love the fact that he's using a gun cleaning mat as a mouse/desk pad.
Glad to see I'm not the only one
Did you notice the background in some of Greg's latest videos? Coupling that with the knowledge they're in Florida, I'm sure they do some shootin'.
@@UncleButterworth 100%.
I noticed the submarine model. Was looking nice.
🇺🇸 2A all day
I own guns too and noticed.
The NVMe Windows laptop boot drive should be able to be transferred to a regular desktop computer, while you're waiting on a possible replacement laptop. The central issue is probably the loose/damaged plug-in power adapter port. May still be fixable by soldering in a replacement port. Might consider obtaining an external USB 3.0 NVMe adapter housing, in case of the need to copy data off.
i buy one m.2 sata its very usefull i need to a m.2 nvme its amazing how easy its recover info and reinstall o.s
I’ve done 100s of these kinda repairs. First time I’ve seen the board short out the battery.
The guns mousepads tell a lot about your dad hahaah.
Gun mousepads, UFO books, taped over webcam.
A man of the people. 😂
Love my tekmat! M&p shield version though
father of florida man
that hes awesome.
It's the AC Power port, some dell have one that is replaceable, others are soldered to the main board. The battery was only lasting about 45 minutes because it was not getting the voltage needed to charge it to 100% ( could also have been a bad battery as well). For you own knowledge, if the laptop does not run from the AC port, with or without a battery it should lead you to only two possible culprits, the power brick, or the power port.
The machine powering on from the juice left in the new battery, proved its not the main board.
The battery had a 45% charge, then cut out completely 2 minutes later.
as loose as the port was I would guess a short at the port , might have killed it- I have seen it a few times, had it happen to me once -maybe the PS ID chip was shorted - just guessing
It is not the port but probably a chip just after it that makes sure proper voltage is sent to the mainboard.
@@GregSalazar Sound like the battery was bad as well, it could have been inaccurately reporting its charge level.
@@damirkvajo it was clearly the port, not saying it wasn't more, but you wouldn't be able to tell unless you repaired the port first.
I get way too excited at seeing a new one of these come out!!
As with others, I'm surprised you jumped to the battery as the problem. I don't disagree that the computer needed a new one for other reasons, but if a laptop won't boot when plugged into the wall the problem's occurring before it even gets to the battery.
I was suprised you landed on the Battery as the issue, my bet would have been an mainboard issue tbh xD Because the issue you are getting are something i would suspect with an issue on the mainboard, but not with an battery issue. the laptop should still be able to boot ALWAYS when plugged in even if battery is dead, if it cant it aint the battery.
yup the battery is only needed without the cable
Came for this, you can remove the battery and still it would work fine if it only had a bad battery
Yes. My first gaming PC was a laptop, and had it for 8 years. The baterry eventually died and had to use it connected all the time.
I also knew the battery was not the issue.
I used to test ex-leased computers and while I didn't work on laptops I did know from the laptop line workers that they would power up the laptop, do their tests and let it charge, then disconnect the lead of the charger to see if the battery held a charge.
Some laptops can't boot with a dead battery connected.
If you check the charging circuit with the multimeter, you might find a shorted high side MOSFET pushing too much current from the main power rail into the battery causing it to lock itself as protective measure.
Theres a reason average refresh time is about 3 years on hardware... Also if that is an external company's laptop. You can get in serious trouble for working on it unauthorized by the company.
Precision 7000 series, a pretty serious machine your dad has there :D
Agreed.
They cost a pretty penny too!
I have seen a lot of Dell laptops have this kind of issue - where replacing the CMOS battery helped.
never seen battery replacement fix a black screen laptop in 29 years...
It wasn't a "black screen." It was literally powering off. And it did fix it... just not _permanently..._ 😅
We keep learning
@@nsap it wasnt the baterry.. the pc has an electric problem...
time to get that mobile hot air station and a stock of connecters.
@@sergiobisonte yes...there were other related issues...it short the battery
I had a similar problem with a DELL laptop and also a Lenovo. It turned out to be the charge connector that was the problem. Still had to replace the laptops since it would be cheaper than sending it out etc.
Like others have pointed out, I’ve never come across a laptop that doesn’t work with the power cable in, even if the battery is completely dead, or even removed. So I figured the issue wasn’t with the battery.
Just in the first minute, I can already tell I like your dad LOL
Hell yeah brotha!!!
Barrel connector on main board i reckon.
For large company laptops are usually disk is encrypted and when warranty is over they recommend to replace laptop soon as possible and when it breaks after warranty they just replace it.
I'm liking that Dolphins memorabilia your dad has. :)
After replacing the battery without connecting power adaptor should have run Diagnostic test to ensure other components are fine , then exact problem can be isolated.
love the sub model
Ayo! You're Dad's reading the Belgariad! I feel weird recognizing that cover from the 2 seconds it was in frame
I had something similar happen with my mother's laptop. Seemed like odd power issues. Changed the battery, and nothing. After hours of following the flow of power with a multimeter, turns out the SATA M.2 port had fried. Took the drive out, installed a 2.5" SATA drive into the other port, and it posted. 🤷♂🤣
Don’t be sad Greg, i love that there are occasional flops, as rare as they are, makes the series more exciting
Like one of my favorite actors says:”A man has to know his limitations”. As you said, it’s better to walk away, then to go on and create more problems. Good decision. Love your show. Greetings from a Canadian born Dutchman spending his retirement in beautiful France. Keep up the the good work and keep a close eye on that junction box switch.
I know with HP laptops a faulty battery won't prevent a laptop from starting up if it's plugged into the power and I would have assumed Dell laptops to be the same. in fact, you can remove the battery all together and the laptop will run normally when plugged into the power. If a HP laptop doesn’t startup when plugged into the power, I wouldn’t have even bothered buying a replacement battery.
Laptops are always the worse to troubleshoot, battery failure is such a common issue and it never seems to work out when you straight up replace the battery, I personally lost 2 laptops to dodgy batteries and their connectors. Glad you did a thorough test Gregg.
Did you ever try charging with a high power USB C charger? It would likely be different circuitry than the main charger port. It might get enough juice into the Dell battery to turn on briefly and backup files.
Yeah, my go to on a power issue is always the charger ports when it comes to laptops. Blue screens, clogged CPU overheating from people using them on their laps and sucking in dust and debris. But a laptop will run on the charger, even without a battery.
Likely all you need is a new charger cable from the back of the computer to the mainboard. Cords get jammed all of the time and get loose and they often lose connection or break off partially. If you buy one, get it directly from Dell if you can. Used ones are often junk and are ready to beak.
I have a company laptop, and I'm a pc geek too, but I wouldn't have even bothered with the battery before engaging IT.
The corpo techs want you to do things their way, and a good chunk of thriving in corpo culture is avoiding blame and criticism.
Shout out to the David Eddings book on the desk. I feeel like i must be around your dads age as i read those as they came out in High School.
Omg, right on the money. First book of the Belgariad series if I'm not mistaken.
Dd you run the Dell Diagnostics on the laptop or website?
Very nice video and I like the change although it wasn’t a gaming pc your videos are always great!
Maybe its some older electrolytic capacitor in the power delivery part of the mainboard, not holding its capacity anymore. This could explain the turning off after a few seconds, since the voltages are more unstable with "broken" capacitors. But it could also be something totally else.
Sounds like the infamouse dell power management board. I do not know if they still make it a simple swap out process or if they now solder it to the motherboard. The dell laptops of the 90's 2000's it was as simple as swaping a attached board via a ribon cable or wire.
Might have seen a lot of use and time, but that Fluke is far from old skool. If you want stuff measured properly (when handheld is required or simply done fast) you grab a unit of that sort! Fantastic instruments
You need to do a hardware reset. Unplug it from power, and hold the power button down for 30 seconds. If it turns on before 30, release, and rehold the power button down for another 30 seconds. Fixed many dells with this issue.
Some tips from someone who does this on a nearly daily basis. Before ordering a new battery, try pulling the battery out completely, plug in, and see if it runs. If it does, then you've isolated the battery as the issue. If not, then chances are really high that the battery is not the issue. For Dell and HP, both have pretty decent diagnostics built in (F12 for Dell, F2 for HP) complete with a power delivery/battery check. Lastly, regards to the data saving, make sure the data drive is NOT bitlocked by Microsoft (they like to turn it on by default). Also some laptops, especially of that age have Optane drives, not easily readable outside of the system they are built in.
On a Dell watch the sensor wire. Some wont work with an aftermark battert or power supply.
I feel your pain. I've been a professional automotive technician for over 20 years. I've bought my own shop. I've worked for multiple domestic and European brands over my career. Whenever I get a call from my father to help him with his vehicles(he's always fixed his own vehicles, but he's not a mechanic. He's a Biomedical Technician), my brain jumps out of my skull and the repairs always seem to go sideways!
You just did a hard reset by unplugging the battery. Plug it in directly with out a battery you won't even need the battery to start it.
Yeah. What about it? 😄
@@GregSalazar If it starts with out the battery it is probably the charge port or the plug.
Well a learning opportunity, check to make sure when you plug in the power that the system is outputting the correct power to everything.
Did you try getting into the built in diagnostics by hitting F12 at the Dell Logo?
Love the video, i like the Miami Dolphins stuff in the background
Did you think about replacing the charge port?
I had a Dell Precision a little older than that one and it recently died on me too. Mine wouldn't light up or power on at all after about 6-7 years, even when plugged in and battery removed.
Some devices, such as my previous phone and an old lenovo lappy which died a few months ago, if the battery had a less than 5% charge they will not power on from powered off state even while plugged in. SteamDeck is the same way also.
It's possible the adapter cooked the battery.
You sure that DC jack was sound, sure looked suspect to me.
Yeah same here. It looked very suspect.
We bypassed it entirely and even probed the mainboard where the jack connected. Measured fine. Confirmed later in the video.
@@GregSalazar These laptops will run with no battery at all but need a signal from the center pin to receive power. It's common for the pin to break off inside the plugs due to bad alignment from a loose jack and then the power supply is completely useless. Or the jack itself wears out enough or breaks internally and can't communicate with the charger. Having the correct voltage at the board does nothing without it receiving the correct signal to enable power delivery. My money is on the jack being bad seeing how loose it was but broken pin in the adapter is more common.
Also the battery is probably totally fine and just went into protection mode when it died and just needs to be recharged to work again.
I had the exact same issue on an Asus laptop (About 4 years ago), so changed out all parts 1 by 1 was was really shocked to find that the hard drive was the issue, as soon as I replaced it, everything worked as normal and problem has not replicated since then, my wife is now using that laptop fine.
"...whenever you don't know how to fix something, don't act like you do, you can cause a lot more damage..."
Some really good advise right there. Thanks, Greg.
Love the FoF series, keep them coming.
Greg, please tell me you held the power button down for 30 seconds (plugged in, off on the wall) before you changed the battery to power cycle it? I had a friend with exactly the same laptop last month with this issue and that cured it totally.
That vip-scdkey is a godsend. Using a slightly newer Dell company laptop and it's nice to use. It surprised me to see it could go up to 64gb RAM. Shame about that one but letting their IT take it back as it is is smart. They'll have a business deal most likely.
Question did you check the cmos battery?
Great content, I enjoy watching your series. I do have a question though…. Why do you rotate items when you hold them for a video shot? Just a personal query (I know I’m not the internet police, so genuinely asking why). Thanks again for the content!
You make such chill videos. Relaxing vibes always. Keep up the amazing content.
Every company I worked for you would be in big trouble if you cracked open a work computer and you weren't part of the IT support group.
Being an I.T. Employee myself. I can confirm we do frown on employees families working on the equipment. It adds a whole new layer to the onion
My question.. did you try power it without the battery? Just with power adapter
As someone who works with Dell laptops.
Because of the age of the laptop with this kind of issue, we would replace this with a newer unit. As a business we look at the time taken for said IT technician to try to fix a 5.5-year-old laptop only to possibly have issues down the road only costing more time, best practice is to flat out replace the laptop with a newer laptop. That is how businesses work.
It does sound as an environmental standpoint to fix the laptop, but you have to think how much of the IT technicas's time is used up trying to fix it and as this is a work laptop how much time the user (In this case, Greg's dad) is down a work machine while the repair is ongoing, just the way how it works in business.
Now if this had been a personal laptop the practices would be much different.
Wow who new a fix or flo would be on a laptop. Keep it up greg!
I LOVE FLOPS with the Classic Cannon Ball Splash!!!!!
My only laptop that I ordered a new battery for I ordered a generic one off Newegg and it only lasted less than a year before it failed to hold a charge. I actually got the manufacturer to replace it, but that one lasted a little over a year before the same problems. Compared to the original battery from Toshiba, that lasted at least 5 years (I was only really using it for Microsoft Office for school, web browsing, and Runescape, so it did all I needed it to). Don't remember how much an OEM battery cost or if I even found one for sale, but sometimes OEM feels worth it.
I'm not exaggerating, but nearly every dell laptop I've had or family members have had ---- ALL had batteries go bad at some point and wouldn't charge. Terrible QC. Yes, some should fail, and no, a battery shouldn't last forever... but their batteries are sorely lacking.
So yeah, woulda thought that was a good guess.
I repaired many Dell laptops in my company. Though this issue is rare, it's not uncommon that the power distribution circuit got toasted. For me, the very first thing I check is short circuit (test the 19.5V pin to ground).
There's also a way to clear stray current according to Dell's technician, which is to remove the main battery, CMOS battery and power adapter, then press the power button for 30 seconds or more. Not sure if this'll work but it usually has a chance to fix the issue.
Lastly, tell that company to get Lenovo Thinkpad or Thinkbook. Dell quality is quite poor these days and expensive for the things they provide.
My guess is the (loose) power connector is flaky. When you plugged in/jiggled the power supply into the loose power connector you caused a (partial?) short. Maybe something like a solder flaking off a broken solder joint or even something crazy like tin whiskers. The short might have cause the new battery to disconnect itself to prevent catching on fire. Perhaps the old battery has been dealing with occasional shorts from the bad connector for a while which has hastened its death.
The DC jack is most likely broken or there is a short on the board if it was not charching.
If you have a 12v lithium based power tool you can try bench charging the new battery with some jumper wires. It looked pretty dead and then you did power cycles and ran it for 15 mins. (Most of those batteries come with a note that says to charge it up fully before use. It is much safer to ship when they aren't fully charged. And they can sit around and lose charge). The Battery protection circuit will cut all power when you fully discharge it. A little voltage will wake it up.
Life makes strange turns. Here we can see Greg as a grown man sitting at his dads desk messing around with his dads computer, looking like an innocent child again.
I have an older ASUS that does this exact same thing. It hadn't been used in a while and started it up one day to use it. After it updated it worked fine and I shut it off. Went back to use it a couple hours later and nothing but fans and keyboard lights. Replaced battery and tried different memory configs and nothing changes. Also pulled out hard drives.
the power brick has a known failure with the center pin when its damage dont charge the battery only deliver energy conected thats all the other known issue its the lack of cooling dell always fails on that... if change of laptop put a thermal pad on the m.2 i did the same with my vostro and update the bios theres a lot of new revisions and they install without warning from the windows update
Had the same issue with an ASUS laptop. The board got fried when I was charging. I thought it was the charger, but the charger still works and using it now, as the original charger of my new laptop has a broken cable, and since it’s a company machine, I can resolder the cable. Although on my never laptop, the charging port was loose and moving - turned out the connector’s solder started to wear off. A quick resoldering fixed that computer
Ya I don’t usually like working on laptops over half the time it’s usually requires soldering and a service mount component
Any chance Dell has things set up to brick non OEM parts if you use them?
Honestly probably something with the charging circuit on the board. Laptop should power in even with a dead battery when plugged into the wall. I have very seldomly ran into a laptop I had a bad battery that would not power from the adapter
it could be that the signal pin in the power cord gives 20v instead of 5v and that could fry a chip ion the laptop easy fix but you have to do some soldering and replace a litlle transistor
Some current dell laptops 2021+, have some sort of security chip in the battery that prevents you from using a third party battery. I do not know a work around for this. I've replaced batteries on dells with 3rd party ones for 10+ years at my IT job.
Hi. Whats the difference between OEM batteries and generic batteries besides the price and should i go for the OEM if i can afford it
Was using a USB C charger considered at all? Or ever used previously? I wonder if that could have worked possibly
Those Dell power plugs to the mainboard aren’t passive. They have some circuitry in them and that can go bad.
Had the same issue with both an alienware and a xps laptops. The only fix was to get replacement board from dell and it worked fine after that.
is the power brick an original one for this pc? if not, maybe - and + are reversed on the conector
Check the charging circuit, you may need the board view.
I built 2 pcs with my dad 5 years ago for a dental office’s servers and I had the best time since I believe we watched one of your videos afterwards
That power connection into the laptop, being 'floppy' might have been a factor? If it was connecting and disconnecting, shorting or whatever, that could cause issues.