Laptop wont Boot, Power and Battery light flash

[mgrunge1967]

I have a Dell Inspiron 1100 that I am trying to fix for a friend. The laptop wont boot as if the battery is not charged and her dog ate the power cord. I have a power cord from my old dell that fits it but when I plug it in, the Power light and Battery light repeatedly flash simultaneously and the laptop is unresponsive. I thought maybe the battery was bad so I removed it and plugged the power cord back in, but it still did not respond to powering on and the lights still flashed. Any idea of what the problem could be and how i could fix it? The power output of my old cord may be different from what the laptop needs for input, but I am not sure as the output label is scratched off. If they were different, is this the response i wiould get from the flashing lights?

[Suspishio]

There's another post in this forum where the dog chewed through the power cord. Pity it was on the wrong side of the block!

Anyway, it seems more probable than not that the effect of doing this was to short the power section of the laptop mobo which is now useless, IMHO.

Since your post is ambiguous as to whether or not the dog actually ate the cord, perhaps you'd kindly confirm this.

[mgrunge1967]

Sorry, my mistake, the laptop was not plugged into the cord when it was chewed through.

[Suspishio]

OK back to basics. The power charger you are using from the old computer should say on it's label PA-6 family, outputting at 20v. This is a 90W charger. The PA-9 family will also work for you. All this orovided nothing else is wrong.

So, if you've got a good second charger and it still doesn't work, then there has to be some sort of short downstream from the charger, like on the 1100's motherboard.

Anyone disagree?

[aj4mq]

The power and charge lights flashing are a BIOS operation. My best information shows that it is a retraining mode. Windows will detect the battery discharging, but the battery will be absent on recharge (power light will stop flashing, but charge light will remain flashing).

If windows is running when it nears 0%, it will shut down. Unfortunately, this may not be a complete drain.

It is possible the battery was under a recall. Unfortunately, HP batteries are only recalled for a short time, and they don't contact registered owners about them.

If you allow it to make it through the procedure, it may not need to do it for a few months. If it starts over, the battery is useless..

If you decide to use the system without the battery, remove the battery, disconnect power, hold the power button for 30 seconds (should clear ram), then reconnect power and boot. The charging cycle should be turned off. May require internal battery to be disconnected. (from experience.)

Good luck.

(There is a BIOS update for your laptop to go from 2005 to 2007, but it doesn't help in this issue. Does seem to boot faster... DO NOT DO THIS WHEN THE POWER LIGHT IS FLASHING.)

[aj4mq]

CORRECTION: This -IS- a bios indication, but not retraining mode as I though. After reading replies to my post on this to other sites, I looked much closer at my power supply and found it has actually been damaged at the strain relief on the power supply side. I removed 6 inches of cord and resoldered it to the primary board, and the problem is gone. (this one..)

What happened? When the power supply is unable to provide a specific voltage at a specific current level, the BIOS will flash the power light to indicate invalid power supply. When the battery is in use when the system is not being powered correctly, it will flash.

Check you power device carefully. I don't recommend resoldering the wires, as I have gotten good at this by destroying a few in the past. I recommend a universal power supply from Radio Shack or similar, such as the iGo, which the more expensive one will allow you to power off of your car, but all adapt most every laptop out there, so if you ever get a new laptop, it will work with it.

Hope this helps.