I tried to start my laptop earlier, only for nothing to happen. It won’t start on battery or when plugged in (it can run without a battery when plugged in). The battery does seem to be dead, and so is the 3V CMOS battery.
I opened it up and noticed a circle visable on one of the inductors. Hopefully you can see it in the picture.
Could this be the problem, or is that normal?
Update: I’ve tested some suggestion and watched some repair videos, but I found nothing. Goodbye old friend 🥲🤚
Thanks for the help guys
That’s normal, inside of the inductor looks like this:
You can also use a multimeter to test across the inductor. It should have no resistance / will beep in continuity mode.
Thanks. I guess I was just hoping it would be an easy find and fix. The beep confirmed hope is lost 🥲
What beep?
The beep multimeters make when in continuity mode. It is a way to test that 2 points are electrically connected with little/no resistance. If they are connected the multimeter will emit a continuous beep. If there is no beep than either the points aren’t connected or there is a resistor or something else preventing the connection. The amount is resistance required to prevent a connection (measured in ohms) tends to be possible to set on the multimeter.
Just the continuity test 😅
Just so you know, as an inductor is just a small coil of copper, the resistivity might be low enough to trigger the beeping on the multimeter! So maybe it’s not dead. I’ve seen a lot of burned down inductor and trust me it looks way worse.
If your multimeter can measure resistance in miliHoms, you should be able to measure at least ~10mR or more (that order of magnitude) Note that measuring a circuit like so is not guaranteed since there’s other stuff on a PCB that gets measured at the same time.
Did you remove the motherboard and looked at the other side?
Ah, I realise my wording was very confusing there. I meant: Because the inductor is NOT the problem - I don’t have any idea what the problem is - therefore the LAPTOP is dead (not the inductor)😂