In this post I’ll explain how to troubleshoot a dead laptop and find the problem. The following troubleshooting tips are not model and brand specific, they should work for most laptops.
Let’s take a look at two different scenarios.
Example 1. The laptop is absolutely dead.
When you plug in the power adapter and press on the power button, there is no signs of life at all. The laptop will not make usual noises, LEDs will not light up, the fan will not spin, the screen is blank and black, etc… In short, the laptop is dead.
What you can do in this case?
1. Make sure the wall outlet is working and the laptop DC adapter is getting power from the outlet. Try another wall outlet.
2. Test the laptop DC power adapter, make sure the voltage output is correct. You can test the DC power adapter with a voltmeter.
3. Let’s say the DC adapter is fine and the adapter outputs correct voltage. In this case unplug the power adapter from the laptop, remove the battery, wait for 1-2 minutes, plug in the adapter and try turning on the laptop again.
OK, you tested the adapter and it’s bad. If you decide to replace the original DC adapter with a generic one, you’ll have to follow this rule:
The voltage output on your new adapter has to be exactly the same as on the original adapter. The amperage on the new adapter could be the same or higher.
If nothing helps and the laptop is still dead, apparently the motherboard is fried or there is a problem with the DC power jack. It’s possible the DC power jack is broken and the motherboard is not getting any power from the adapter. In this case you’ll have to disassemble the laptop and replace the power jack. Check out this guide for fixing laptop power jack.
Example 2. When you plug the DC power adapter and press on the power button, the laptop starts making normal noises, the LEDs work properly but noting appears on the screen. The laptop will not start.

First of all, take a closer look at the LCD screen. Look at the screen under bright light. It’s possible that the image is still on the screen but it’s very faint. If that’s the case, check out these tips for troubleshooting laptop with backlight failure.

If there is no image on the laptop LCD screen, test the laptop with an external monitor. Connect an external monitor to the VGA port on your laptop and turn the laptop on. You can toggle video output between the internal LCD screen and external monitor by pressing Fn and F4 keys simultaneously on HP laptops, Fn and F5 keys on Toshiba laptops, Fn and F7 keys on IBM laptops. Other laptops may use different key combinations.
Let’s say the external monitor works fine but the internal LCD screen has no image at all. If that’s the case, your problem could be related to the LCD screen or the video cable. Also, make sure the video cable makes good connection with the motherboard and the LCD screen. Try reconnecting, reseating the cable.

In my case, both internal and external monitors were absolutely dead. Neither of them had image. That means the problem is not related to the LCD screen or the video cable. From my experience I know that this problem could be related to the laptop memory.

Try reseating the memory module, maybe it’s not making good connection with the memory slot. Try cleaning contacts on the memory module with pen eraser. Try moving the memory module into another slot. Try replacing the memory module with another known good module, it’s possible that your original module is dead.
If you have two memory modules installed you can try removing them one by one, it’s possible that one of the modules is bad. Try installing different memory modules into different memory slots.
In my case reseating, swapping the memory module didn’t help. I was pretty confident that my problem is not memory related and I moved on.

Try removing battery, hard drive and DVD drive and turning on the laptop without these components.

Also, try turning on the laptop with an external monitor when the video cable is unplugged from the motherboard. If the laptop start with video on the external monitor, apparently there is something wrong with the laptop display panel.

In my case removing the hard drive and DVD drive didn’t help. Unplugging the video cable didn’t help either.
I continued taking my laptop apart piece by piece and tested it after each step.
I removed wireless card, modem, disconnected the keyboard but it didn’t help.

I still wasn’t able to boot the laptop with video on the external monitor.

Finally, I disassembled the laptop and removed the motherboard.

On this picture you see my final test. The motherboard has been removed from the base and I assembled basic barebone system on my bench.
1. Motherboard. Like on most laptops, in my case the video card is integrated into the motherboard
2. CPU with heatsink and cooling fan.
3. Known good memory module.
4. The power button board witch I need to turn on the system.
5. Working DC power adapter.
Still cannot get any video on the external monitor. The system turns on, the cooling fan starts spinning but there is no video.
At this point I’m 95% sure that the motherboard is dead. CPU failures are not very common, so it must be bad motherboard.
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May 19th, 2013 at 11:41 am
@ Bill,
Did you test the AC adapter. It’s possible the problem is INSIDE the adapter plug or cable. I would test the laptop with another AC adapter.
May 7th, 2013 at 2:28 pm
I’ll try to be concise.
I have an Aspire 7551 and the DC jack was wonky and had to be jiggled to get power to the laptop. So I replaced the DC jack, twice. I figured I had gotten a DOA on the first one when the laptop didn’t charge. Odd thing is… When the battery has a charge the laptop fires up.
Any ideas before I scrap it?
February 28th, 2013 at 3:03 am
i tried it and yet stil i didnt see any light indication .no sign of power from the mother=board so pls what else shud i du cos my computer not powering
February 10th, 2013 at 6:14 pm
Hi, I have a Acer 5740G Laptop. When I hit the power button the led on the laptop comes on for 1-2 seconds then goes out, the display, external monitor, and fans have no activity. The led on the power adapter led is on and the battery is good. Hi, I have a power led showing but not the battery led. When I press the power button no post or any other response. So any suggestions? Have tried unplugging and removing battery for extended time, 30 seconds holding power button in with battery removed and unplugged, etc. So far no luck.
February 9th, 2013 at 9:47 pm
My Thinkpad shows only vertical bars of very thin lines of all colours on entire screen. When connected to external monitor, it
shows dots on whole screen with some random letters which means
nothing. It looks as if bad graphic card shows in Desktop computer.
Please guide and help me. Thanks.
February 4th, 2013 at 5:34 am
@ Peace,
Sorry cannot help here. I don’t fix motherboards on component level.
January 4th, 2013 at 10:18 pm
How do you revive a dead motherboard ..Working on motherboard at chip level..
Removing ICs and replacing them with new ones ..How do you do that
and How do you determine which IC is working or not
Please Kindly through more light on working on motherboard at chip level.
Completely repairing a dead motherboard
November 19th, 2012 at 12:47 am
I have a Inspirion 1525 & have had issue with it booting up proper…It hangs,would shut down sometimes or look like it was going to boot up & nothing…no movement on the screen…
I was told to upgrade the ram & have gotten one,but now its been taken apart for so long I can’t remember what goes where…I also do have the Hard drive out as another person was to fix it for me & never did…
So I really need help if you can-a diagram would be amazing if you have one already done-Also can you charge the battery w/o the HD & ram nor installed or should you refrain from doing any of this until its all together or should you even have the battery installed w/o these important pieces not in?
ANY help is much appreciated!!
November 6th, 2012 at 4:44 am
Sir, can you help me with my problem? I have an Acer V3-471G and I deleted the hidden partition for its recovery then the disk that the store where I bought it burned 4 disks for recovery and I couldn’t finish the recover because the recovery can’t install an image file… Do you have another option that you can advice so that I can recover my laptop to its factory default without the disk and the hidden partition?
November 2nd, 2012 at 11:32 am
Hi, I have a Acer 5740G Laptop. When I hit the power button the led on the laptop comes on for 1-2 seconds then goes out, the display, external monitor, and fans have no activity. The led on the power adapter led is on and the battery is good. Any ideas? Is it the motherboard or more likely the graphics card?