180W Laptop charged with 45W charger, is it dead?

My brother gave me a dead gaming laptop (Asus GL503V). He bought it on eBay some time ago but it died a couple of months after. A couple of days ago he gave it to me, and I noticed that the charger was relatively small considering the size of the laptop. When I checked, the charger was 45W, while the laptop was 180W.

I saw the computer working in my brother's hands and the laptop would constantly start charging and stop charging every 20 seconds or so. He told me one day it just died out of nowhere.

When I connect the smaller charger, nothing lights up and nothing at all happens. Could the motherboard be dead or could it just need a new charger?

Here are the specs of the Onn Universal 45W Laptop Power Adapter Charger from Walmart that was used to replace the original Asus adapter:

Kakuhiry

Posted 2019-10-22T21:17:26.800

Reputation: 365

What output voltage and current does the adapter you used say it provides? – Mr Ethernet – 2019-10-22T21:28:29.707

8Buy the proper ac adapter, i doubt the laptop is damaged but the adapter is. – Moab – 2019-10-22T21:50:42.893

37Yup. 180W / 45W = 4. The AC adapter died a toasty death trying to provide 4x more power than it was ever designed to to a very power-hungry laptop. – Mr Ethernet – 2019-10-22T21:58:16.317

@Mr Ethernet The adapter that i used says Output: 19.5V --- 2.31A - 45W, i'm not sure what that means, but i hope that's the answer for the question – Kakuhiry – 2019-10-22T22:04:55.143

1@Moab Yeah, that's what i'm thinking of doing, but i'm super short on money, i may start my first ever job next week, i may buy it then – Kakuhiry – 2019-10-22T22:05:55.720

Is it definitely the laptop that's dead? It's possible the laptop just ran out of battery and the charger is dead - which is more likely than usual given it's undersized. – Simon – 2019-10-23T07:33:37.413

3If the battery is toast because of old age the laptop will try to run essentially on the adapter which is too small to power it. – Peter - Reinstate Monica – 2019-10-23T14:32:03.347

1Despite all the answers saying the power supply is dead, I don't think we have enough information to say so for sure. It's likely it's the power supply, but it could be a component inside the laptop as well. Unless you test the laptop with a known good power supply (or the power supply with a known good laptop), it's nearly impossible to tell. If you have a multimeter you could also check if there's any voltage on the power supply connector (the one on the laptop side, of course). – jcaron – 2019-10-23T15:44:58.993

1@Mr Ethernet: 180 W would be the maximum the laptop would draw, with all CPU(s), cooling fans, hard drives, and other accessories running. If the machine is just sitting idle, it will draw much less - for instance, I'm just running FireFox and normal Linux background processes now/ CPU is around 3%, fan is off, and (per PowerTop) I draw about 18W. Likewise, if you leave the machine off and the charget plugged in, your battery should charge, and would then power the machine until it is drained. – jamesqf – 2019-10-24T03:33:02.997

9@MrEthernet Is this based on actual EE knowledge or are you just making a guess here? I don't think that a properly designed power supply with current limiting would "die a toasty death" because it's only going to supply it's rated power regardless of how much the load is trying to draw. If you plug a phone capable of charging from 2A into a 500mA computer USB port the computer won't catch fire, it will just charge the phone 4 times slower. As far as I can tell the only problems that would arise from using a properly designed 45W charger would be slower charge times. – JShorthouse – 2019-10-24T11:56:14.267

@JShorthouse "...are you just making a guess here?" Do some research into the OP's replacement adapter. This isn't a "properly designed power supply with current limiting". It's a budget $20 charger from Walmart, with multiple customer complaints of overheating. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Onn-Universal-45W-Laptop-Power-Adapter-Charger/540687592

– Mr Ethernet – 2019-10-24T12:00:46.190

@MrEthernet Alright, well that's a separate problem entirely then and would happen with a 45W laptop too. It has nothing to do with "trying to provide 4x more power" - that's not how power supplies work. – JShorthouse – 2019-10-24T16:45:33.110

1@JShorthouse "the computer won't catch fire" I never said anything would catch fire. You're critizing me for assuming that a cheap $20 adapter doesn't have a current-limiting circuit, before assuming yourself that it does. Neither of us knows for sure but we do know that something failed here. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make to be honest. What are you trying to suggest? That it's the laptop failed and not the adapter? Or that the adapter failed but it's a coincidence and had nothing to do with the excessive demand placed upon it? – Mr Ethernet – 2019-10-24T17:33:07.887

@JShorthouse "... Otherwise, if the power supply provides the excess current beyond its rated amount for a prolonged time, it may damage the components." https://www.sunpower-uk.com/glossary/what-is-rated-output-current/ You can find plenty of references to power supplies being irreparably harmed by prolonged excessive current demands if you do some research. This often is "how (some) power supplies work", particularly no-frills $20 budget models. "actual EE knowledge" the question here is does the adapter have a current-limiting circuit or not. We don't know for sure, but it failed.

– Mr Ethernet – 2019-10-24T17:41:51.000

Current limiting circuitry costs money. It's quite likely that a cheap adapter will lack this, and the current draw will exceed its capacity, it will overheat and possibly melt. – Stabledog – 2019-10-24T19:03:22.823

2@MrEthernet Your original comment is extremely misleading and it seems like people upvoting it don't understand how power supplies work. It gives off the impression that an ideal 45W power supply connected to a 180W load will just attempt to supply 4x it's rated current and die, when that isn't how power supplies should work at all. You've found the right reasons now but I don't genuinely believe that's what you were trying to convey in your initial comment. – JShorthouse – 2019-10-24T20:24:51.613

1@JShorthouse "You've found the right reasons now" In the interest of brevity and due to comment character limitations, I didn't go down the rabbit hole of discussing possible unknowns ad nauseam in my initial comment. That's not what comments are for. You're assuming that a $20 Walmart adapter will have a particular feature. Common sense suggests that feature is lacking here because the adapter apparently couldn't protect itself from damage caused by prolonged overloading. It could be a coincidence but it's more likely it worked too hard. Either way, I think we both essentially agree! – Mr Ethernet – 2019-10-24T20:40:31.010

1@MrEthernet "I think we both essentially agree" Yes :) I hope you will agree with me that your initial comment is somewhat misleading though, obviously you seem to understand the "real" reasoning but from your comment I think that a layman would deduce that a power supply is perhaps like a shelf rated for 45Kg that will collapse when 180Kg is loaded onto it. Obviously for an ideal power supply this would not be the case, and I think you should have mentioned current limiting in your comment, it would have still fit in the character limit :) – JShorthouse – 2019-10-24T20:56:49.070

@JShorthouse The USB example is misguided. Phones use special tricks to determine the capabilities of the power supply they're connected to (e.g., the presence of particular voltages on the data lines). It is the phone that is limiting the current, not the power supply. "actual EE knowledge" is that if you connect a 45W charger to a 180W laptop it may be damaged because you're using it outside its rated specifications, very much like the shelf you're referring to which may collapse when overloaded. – Tom van der Zanden – 2019-10-25T10:30:25.350

1@JShorthouse Is your comment based on "actual EE knowledge"? Because it sure doesn't look like it is. Current limiting needs to be actively added to a power supply circuit, it doesn't just come for free, and the vast majority of cheap power supplies don't have it. The phone example is wrong because it's the phone that's limiting the amount of power it draws to avoid killing older USB ports (and shitty unprotected chargers). Power delivery negotiation is a relatively new technology that is basically limited to usb devices, there's no reason to do it between a pc and its own dedicated charger. – Demonblack – 2019-10-25T12:51:16.587

@JShorthouse In EE there are no "ideal 45W power supplies." There are ideal 19.5V voltage sources, and practical implementations of them may or may not have a maximum power rating of 45W. – user253751 – 2019-10-25T18:16:41.620

Answers

An EE here. Your power supply is inadequate to power the laptop. Since this model has a non-removable battery, your best bet is to attempt powering it using a properly rated supply. Any other testing would be inconclusive.

A bit more details, if you want to understand how parts of the puzzle connect here. First of all, suppose the laptop is totally off, and you are trying to charge the battery alone. In this disassembly video at 3:07 the rating of the battery can be clearly seen:

Model B41N1711, nominal voltage 15.2V, capacity (typical) 4240mAh.

A typical Li-ion battery charger (the battery is marked generic Li-ion, but judging by its thin rectangular cells, it's most likely a Li-polymer type; this is not really important) works in 3 different modes. To explain them, let's use C for the battery capacity divided by 1 hour: C=4.3A (rounding up to 2 digits). This parameter is important, as it is used as the maximum charging current for the battery.

The battery appears to contain 4 cells, ostensibly used in series, as the per-cell voltage of 15.2V/4=3.8V is in a typical range for a Li-ion cell. This is important, as we base the threshold on a per-cell voltage (and current through all 4 cells is the same, as they are connected in series. Actual picture is much more complex, but this is not essential for understanding, except why I am talking about voltages as small as 3V: that's a per-cell voltage).

When the battery is deeply discharged, the charging circuit supplies a constant current of 0.1×C, which is only 0.43A, something that your supply is perfectly capable of. This is the first mode. It is important to limit the charge current at this stage, because if you connect the cell to (an ideal) voltage source, it will consume tens of times more than C, and likely explode from overheating.

When the battery is conditioned enough so that per-cell voltage reaches ~3V, the charger is safe to switch to the full charge current mode (but still a constant current!), so that it switches to supplying the full C, which is 4.3A. Your supply is rated for only half of this current.

Now, for the sake of completeness, I should mention the third mode, the constant voltage charging. Normally, the charging circuit would switch to this mode when the per-cell voltage reaches some 0.3V above the rated voltage, which would be 3.8+0.3=4.1V per cell. The battery took enough charge so we know it wont gulp too much current and explode, and now we feed the cell voltage, and measure charging current. Note it was the other way round until now. When the current naturally drops to 0.1×C, the charging circuit is turned off, as the battery is now considered fully charged.

What happens if the charger is trying to feed 4.3A into the battery, but your supply is rated for 2.3A? This depends on how much self-protecting circuitry is there in the supply. A quality power supply will turn itself off for a time, and attempt to restart in a few seconds. A cheap supply will experience a voltage sag (well below its rated output), and more likely than not overheat and die, either quietly or letting its magic smoke out. Some supplies have as simple a thing inside as a sacrificial fuse which melts when the current draw is too high.

What I think happened in your case. The charging circuitry inside the laptop is usually much smarter than that in a cheap power supply, because an error there can result in an explosion, fire, injury, death and/or a huge class action settlement. When it switched from the 0.1C to C constant current mode, the supply either turned itself off (if it's smarter) or simply sagged (if not). In either case, the charger detected an anomaly and stopped charging the battery. After a short while, it attempted a restart. Again, it starts gently at 0.1C, measures the voltage (after a couple seconds, to let the chemistry settle), and, detecting the 3V threshold voltage, switches to full C current mode... rinse, repeat. You've got the on-off charge cycle, and the 20s cycle time does not look implausible, although it seems nearly too long a time.

The notebook does not always consume 180W! Imagine putting a 200W incandescent bulb into this case: it would be quite hot. The actual power consumption is much less, at least until you load both the CPU and GPU to full capacity and turn screen backlight to eleven, while simultaneously charging the battery at the maximum current--and still the rating is usually given with a large margin. So, when doing almost nothing, even a powered laptop would discharge the battery very gently while our cycle of overloading the supply and turning off the charger continued (2.3A seems just enough to power the idle laptop at ~20W and send 0.1C to the battery). This would just lengthen the time it takes the charging circuit to charge the battery to that threshold of 3V by an extra 10-15 seconds (because the powered laptop would discharge it a bit while supply is not powering the whole rig) does not seem unlikely. Now the period of 20s makes even more sense.

TL;DR: Your power supply is likely toast, and is no match to the load anyway. Maintaining the battery at below 10%¹ capacity is not optimal, but it is not likely to hurt it much, and it is probably still good. Borrow an adequate known good power supply, and try to boot the laptop.

Then, if it boots, but the battery does not charge, let it charge for a while (the laptop does not have to be on, just plugged in). If the battery has deeply discharged from just sitting there unpowered, it may take from hours to few days to recover, and then at some moment you'll notice it would take the charge normally. If it does not start charging after 3 days, well, shop for a new battery and have someone qualified replace it. Do not try it yourself if you do not know what you are doing, and do not think that you know what you are doing if you've seen someone doing it on YouTube! A lithium battery is literally an incendiary device if handled improperly, and a flat cell case is made of just thick foil, too easy to puncture and short at the same time.

If the machine does not boot, or at least shows any signs of life with a known good power supply, then please recycle it responsibly, sorry. :(

¹ This article on DigiKey mentions the preconditioning charge of 10% in the first paragraph under the “Carefully does it” heading; the full, 100% charge is the total area under the “battery current” line on the graph, and the preconditioning charge at 0.1C is the area under the part of the line from time 0 to the point where the charge current jumps from 0.1C to C. Since the battery sat idle for a while, it may have discharged completely through its natural leakage.
(Thanks to @MrEthernet for the request to clarify the original value of 20% for the initial low-current preconditioning phase; the value was, according to the op. cit., incorrect, and I updated it.)

kkm

Posted 2019-10-22T21:17:26.800

Reputation: 793

1"Maintaining the battery at about 20% capacity is not the healthiest thing for it." I read somewhere that 40% was the optimal percentage charge for Li-ion to minimize aging during storage at room temperature. Just wondering where the 20% figure comes into this? – Mr Ethernet – 2019-10-23T23:44:29.960

3@MrEthernet, yes, as the engineer's lore goes, 40% is the optimal charge for longevity (the story I heard, below room temp and above freezing is better for long-term storage), 0 is very bad, and 20% is kinda the lower bound of okay. But I cannot provide scientific references for that; many engineers go with ballpark numbers in their heads that just work (or they think so; everyone is biased). Many a number come from mfg's data sheets and application notes, but the research behind them may be unpublished. Your note is very valid, thanks for the feedback, and I'll change my wording a bit. – kkm – 2019-10-24T01:03:42.067

1@MrEthernet, I updated this part, and found an application article that provided a different figure, 10%. Thanks again for questioning the number, which was off. Ask three engineers, get three different values (and they all work in practice)--this is how we design things that "just work". Of course, this is partially tongue-in-cheek: if I were to design a piece of charging circuitry, I'd look for many more than just one article first. But then I would nearly certainly pull a number off the top of my head for some minor detail. – kkm – 2019-10-24T01:37:59.503

"An EE here." What's an EE? – Arjan – 2019-10-24T11:58:07.410

6@Arjan usually Electrical Engineer, occasionally Electronics Engineer. – WBT – 2019-10-24T14:26:19.133

1Extremely unnecessary long answer. – Pedro Lobito – 2019-10-25T02:47:28.167

2@PedroLobito, thank you for sharing your priceless opinion, highly appreciated! – kkm – 2019-10-25T09:56:47.960

My brother gave me a dead gaming laptop (Asus GL503V)

Here's the original AC adapter for that laptop:

As long as the adapter used also provided approximately 19.5V DC then it would not have damaged the laptop. A lower current than the 9.23 A the laptop is designed to draw would just mean slower charge times.

When i checked, the charger was 45W, while the laptop is 180W.

The supply was rated for exactly 25% of the demand. This charger would therefore take 4x longer to charge the laptop than the correct charger would have taken.

This situation would be just like trying to charge a modern smartphone designed to draw 2 A using an old charger that could only supply 500 mA. It would be completely harmless, as the voltage would still match, but charge times would be quadrupled as the power supply could only meet 1/4 of the device's power demands.

Mr Ethernet

Posted 2019-10-22T21:17:26.800

Reputation: 3 563

22If it is too small the adapter will overheat under use of the laptop. Been there done that. – Moab – 2019-10-22T21:49:04.740

37@Moab you solved this riddle. The power supply died here trying to keep up with the laptop's 400% power demands. The laptop lived and the power supply died. – Mr Ethernet – 2019-10-22T21:55:33.333

I just googled the name of the adapter, which is a Onn AC ADAPTER, it's an universal one, when you google it, the first link will be a Walmart product, it's that exact same one (I'd post a pic myself, but it says that i need more reputation and i'm not sure if i should be posting links) – Kakuhiry – 2019-10-22T22:11:49.087

I was able to add a picture – Kakuhiry – 2019-10-22T22:17:10.350

@Kakuhiry yeah "output 2.31A". You never want to use a generic universal adapter for something that draws an unusually high current. In this case: 9.23A. – Mr Ethernet – 2019-10-22T22:17:48.330

@Mr Ethernet I understand, did using it could have caused any damage to the computer or would it be just fine if i used another adapter? – Kakuhiry – 2019-10-22T22:21:23.307

3Luckily, the voltage was exactly the same, so the laptop itself will be okay. The adapter just couldn't handle the load. – Mr Ethernet – 2019-10-22T22:43:30.560

7It might be harmless to the laptop but it has the potential to be destructive to the charger itself. Being permanently over current due to high demand could stress components and cause them to overheat. High current draw can also cause voltage to drop and would explain the original "would stop charging" problem. It is most likely the charger is dead, but the regular high/low voltage cycling could also have done something to the laptop charging circuit. – Mokubai – 2019-10-23T06:50:29.113

It's really important to note that the high-power laptops like this will be unlikely to charge at the full 180W... but while operating at high-performance the system will use the majority of this power, not the charging circuitry. – Attie – 2019-10-23T11:39:44.897

6"This charger would therefore take 4x longer to charge the laptop than the correct charger would have taken." This is likely wrong. What is much more likely is that the laptop will still try to draw whatever its charging circuit is designed to draw, which is more than what the supply can provide, and the supply will either overheat or shut down itself regularily. There are smarter chargers / charging circuits from other brands that can adapt (maybe Dell), but I doubt this is the case here. The laptop does not know that it is a 45W supply, and can't reduce its charging current accordingly. – dim lost faith in SE – 2019-10-23T11:54:40.370

@dim I see what you mean, although if the adapter did shut down regularly because of thermal issues, that would still increase charging times, even if not by exactly a factor of four. So are modern smartphones that are designed to charge with a 2 A charger, which charge hours slower with an old 500 mA charger, just smart enough to throttle their current draw? – Mr Ethernet – 2019-10-23T12:03:49.340

@MrEthernet Yes, that could still, in appearance, just increase charging time, but it will also put the charger in a lot of stress - which, as we see, can easily result in a failure, ultimately. So, really, you can't use a smaller charging block than specified, and still expect the thing to still work flawlessly, the only consequence being slower charging time. For USB, indeed, there is mechanism that allows the device to know how much power it can safely draw (just like the smarter chargers I mentioned). See https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/121366.

– dim lost faith in SE – 2019-10-23T12:15:34.567

@MrEthernet The volltage is only guaranteed if the load does not exceed the current rating. If you try to draw 9A from a PSU that can only supply 2.5 the output voltage will begin to drop in proportion to how much more current you are demanding than the PSU can supply. – J... – 2019-10-23T15:32:05.447

I guess exactly what went down is a little complicated as the total current draw at any given time would depend on whether the laptop was attempting to charge the battery , power the rest of the laptop or do both simultaneously. Then there's the question of how under load the CPU/GPU is, which affects power consumption. The voltage drop makes sense. Too bad we can't hook it up to a multi-meter now to measure everything!‍ ‍ – Mr Ethernet – 2019-10-23T15:39:13.150

@MrEthernet yes, phones have ways of figuring out what kind of charger they're attached to, and regulating their current draw accordingly. Laptops occasionally have such things, but being able to use an off-brand charger is a good sign that the machine doesn't. Without such logic in the laptop, given a load so far beyond its rating, the power supply will do one or more of: suffer a major voltage drop, go into oscillation, shut down, or damage itself beyond repair. – hobbs – 2019-10-23T17:46:00.610

1The comments are correct but this answer is wrong. At a given voltage, the laptop will draw a given amperage. If the power supply is rated for less than that, it will either overheat (eventually catching fire) or blow an internal fuse. – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft – 2019-10-23T18:00:52.200

@BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft "At a given voltage..." Would you agree that it's hard to be sure if there was a voltage drop or not? It feels like that's one of the unknown variables here. If there was a voltage drop, the power output of the adapter would be reduced and presumably there would be less overheating than if the voltage stayed constant at 19.5 V? – Mr Ethernet – 2019-10-23T18:04:41.667

1"As long as the adapter used also provided approximately 19.5V DC then it would have not damaged the laptop. A lower current than the 9.23 A the laptop is designed to draw would just mean slower charge times." This is likely true in this specific case but it's not true in general. An undersized power supply may supply a lower voltage under load and devices power supplies can be damaged by low voltages. For example, a low voltage can cause a switch to fail to operate, leading to continuous current flow in parts of the device's internal power supply that were not designed to take that. – David Schwartz – 2019-10-24T04:36:39.520

2Your analogy to phone chargers is imperfect. They charge over USB cables, and the USB power-delivery standard has a protocol for negotiating a voltage / current level that both sides can handle. So you can safely use a weak charger to slowly charge a thirsty phone; the phone controls itself and doesn't draw too much current. A laptop is designed to be used with a sufficiently-rated charger and only has a power + ground connection, not a data negotiation with the charger. Like @BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft says, the laptop will draw more current than the charger can handle and make it fail. – Peter Cordes – 2019-10-24T07:09:40.467

Having 1/4 of the power rating as charger is very meager, and depending on what was being done with the computer, it may very well eventually have killed the charger.

However, note that 180W is the maximum that the laptop will consume, not the average. Most computers, most of the time, are mostly idle and consume very little power. Something around 10-20W is reasonable for "normal" stuff like writing a letter or surfing the web. My desktop computer here consumes around 30W in "normal" mostly idle operation (the monitor consumes twice as much!), and desktop computers are a lot less tuned to be energy-conservative than laptops.
Only when playing games, you would expect actual 180W being consumed. So, 45W should be just about enough for doing "normal" stuff and adding a little charge to the battery meanwhile.

Now of course, something that has to operate at 100% yield all the time will eventually break. That's not about "if", but about "when".

So, chances that the charger is actually broken, are high. Also, I've had cases where the socket (where you plug in the charger) became flaky after some time, that would also explain the charges-doesn't-charge-charges thing that you described. The laptop then probably ran until eventually the battery was empty.

That doesn't mean the battery couldn't have died or the mainboard couldn't have a defect. It's just not very likely. In any case a too weak charger will certainly not cause a defect on the mainboard (though it could always have a defect otherwise).

Also note that a laptop is of course a portable computer. That means it can, pretty obviously, run entirely without the charger, on battery alone. This somewhat mitigates the absolute need for a powerful charger.
Much like a Diesel locomotive, which in reality is not at all a Diesel locomotive at all. It's truly the precursor of a hybrid engine. The Diesel motor powers a capacitator (or battery), and an electro motor actually moves the train around, using energy from the battery. The Diesel is good at providing a steady influx of electric power, but it isn't particularly good at delivering stunt performance. The battery / electro motor combo, on the other hand side, excels exactly in this discipline. It only needs a means of getting steadily charged, somehow. Very similar, if you think about it.

The fact that a laptop can operate without charger altogether provides a recipe to find out what's wrong, too:

Plug in charger (laptop stays turned off). Little red LED near charger hole goes on within a few seconds. If that happens, charger probably "works fine", something else is broken. Alternatively, plug it into someone else's (compatible, check voltage!) laptop. No red light means the charger is dead.
Carefully nudge the plug a bit. If you get a red LED now, the socket is loose (trivial to fix if you have a bit of experience with soldering, but you will probably want to let a repair shop do it).
Use any kind of compatible or halfway compatible charger (same form factor on plug, and same voltage, with no tolerance upwards, and 1-3V tolerance downwards) to charge the laptop. Leave charging over night, pull plug. Turn laptop on. Works or not? If it does work now, your charger is dead.
Remove battery from laptop, plug in charger. Turn on. This should work, but you will not be able to run hefty stuff like games. If it doesn't work, the battery isn't the culprit. If it does work, replace battery.
Try getting your battery charged somehow, or try getting a replacement charger somehow (borrow from a friend? ask in a store?). If any of the above works with the now charged battery or the other charger, laptop is dead.

Damon

Posted 2019-10-22T21:17:26.800

Reputation: 4 002

I guess it might indeed have killed the charger, especially when the battery was empty while the computer was used. Like Apple MacBooks would reduce processing power when the battery was removed, and the only power source would be the small charger: "This prevents the computer from shutting down if it demands more power than the A/C adaptor alone can provide".

– Arjan – 2019-10-23T11:40:47.280

Considering it's described as a gaming laptop, I strongly suspect it wasn't just used for writing letters. That charger is seriously suspect. – Mast – 2019-10-23T13:44:41.450

nitpick: EMD locomotives don't have batteries. The engine(s) runs a (very large - easily half the power output of the engine) air compressor and a generator, the generator runs the motor(s) and other electrical loads. – Phil – 2019-10-23T20:55:49.553

Try removing the laptop battery and connecting the AC adapter. If it powers on, the issue was with the battery. A damaged or spent battery may prevent the system from powering on, but any laptop should work with no battery and the AC power connected.

You probably can go into the firmware menu (BIOS or UEFI) and check the battery health, if you can get it to power on.

If it does not, the issue could be the motherboard or charger. The cheaper component to replace will be the charger, so try getting another one of those.

Wrong chargers can do a number of things (such as generate firmware error messages or cause the laptop to run more slowly), but constantly starting/stopping charging isn't typically one of them.

LawrenceC

Posted 2019-10-22T21:17:26.800

Reputation: 63 487

Wouldn't they need to use a larger AC adapter? If its a 180W laptop and only a 45W adapter it may not be able to provide enough power to turn on. – Sam Axe – 2019-10-22T21:46:20.807

1Exactly. That replacement charger was completely inadequate. The laptop is expecting something than can supply over 9 Amps! – Mr Ethernet – 2019-10-22T22:03:29.230

I just tested this out, but sadly, it did no work, @Sam Axe what you said makes a lot of sense and i guess you're right, but i'm not sure. – Kakuhiry – 2019-10-22T22:07:42.183

This model has a non-removable battery. See https://youtu.be/y6jIMcA6sLA

– kkm – 2019-10-23T11:03:47.317

With today's smart batteries and chargers I'd guess what happened is that the laptop simply rejected to (wrong) power supply. My Dell G3 will ignore external power unless it has a Dell powersupply with at least 180W plugged in; an HP powersupply with 230W didn't do anything, and it was the same with a Dell 60W powersupply.

Laptops do this to protect both the battery and the laptop itself. Dumb thing about it is you need the original powersupply, a noname-brick or powersupply from another laptop (although it might work, given that the voltage and amperage are ok) will be rejected and the laptops simply runs on battery (until it's exhausted).

flinkflonk

Posted 2019-10-22T21:17:26.800

Reputation: 111