Recently, my laptop, a Presario CQ62 Notebook PC (yay copy and paste) has been having steadily worsening charging issues. I bought this as a refurbished computer specifically for school back in August. I have a theory, but I figured I'd ask a group of generally knowledgeable people in the computer department for their thoughts so that I can consider my next step.
A month and half back, I pulled my laptop off the charger to do help out a friend with something. Not something my laptop isn't used to. Normally, my laptop just sits on a desk that, I'll admit, is somewhat crowded and doesn't provide absolutely perfect ventilation. When I went to plug it back in that night, I couldn't get it to charge at all. I just let my laptop sit normally for a few hours and hit the hay early that night. Around 4am, I woke up and couldn't sleep for awhile, so I plugged it back in. Boom, it started charging.
After that, I was honestly scared to pull it off the charger. When I went home for Thanksgiving, that was the first time it had been pulled from the charger in a few weeks. Upon plugging it back in at home, it seemed to charge fine. Upon taking it back to school, still seemingly the issue had gone. But then, I brought it home this time.
I enjoy watching Netflix in bed on my laptop (though I'm getting more accustomed to using my tablet due to these recent problems), and it seems that whenever I have the laptop at a weird angle for more than about 30 minutes, the laptop stops charging. No amount of cord fiddling ever fixes it. Yet, if I close the laptop, set it down as you normally would a laptop and leave the cable in, within about 30 minutes, my laptop starts charging once more.
Now, what I think:
I think the solder holding the charging port in place has stopped doing its job, and that my charging port doesn't sit in place right when I move the laptop around in odd positions. When I let it sit for a little while, the charging port re-centers, and the current starts flowing properly once more.
To note, I tried two different chargers, one from a computer that uses a charger identical to mine, and I ran into the same issues. As well, fiddling with the charger in absolutely any way does not seem to yield any result. That means the charger is likely entirely innocent.
To put my mind at ease, since I absolutely can not afford a new computer, but a simple repair could easily be taken care of by the right people for relatively cheap:
How likely is it that my charging port is connected to the motherboard (as in, physically connected to the degree that when broken, the entire motherboard has to be replaced), and that there's motherboard damage? Based on the odd charging issues only when the computer is angled, and it seeming to charge again only after the computer has essentially had time to settle, I'd like to say this is unlikely at least for my computer. I'm not willing to open it myself and look though, due to not exactly feeling competent enough to dismantle my computer and put it back together right.
Am I at least potentially on the right track? Because I figure if it's just the solder, it's probably a cheap repair.
Thanks in advance for any help, even if it's just affirmation that I'm not entirely stupid.
A month and half back, I pulled my laptop off the charger to do help out a friend with something. Not something my laptop isn't used to. Normally, my laptop just sits on a desk that, I'll admit, is somewhat crowded and doesn't provide absolutely perfect ventilation. When I went to plug it back in that night, I couldn't get it to charge at all. I just let my laptop sit normally for a few hours and hit the hay early that night. Around 4am, I woke up and couldn't sleep for awhile, so I plugged it back in. Boom, it started charging.
After that, I was honestly scared to pull it off the charger. When I went home for Thanksgiving, that was the first time it had been pulled from the charger in a few weeks. Upon plugging it back in at home, it seemed to charge fine. Upon taking it back to school, still seemingly the issue had gone. But then, I brought it home this time.
I enjoy watching Netflix in bed on my laptop (though I'm getting more accustomed to using my tablet due to these recent problems), and it seems that whenever I have the laptop at a weird angle for more than about 30 minutes, the laptop stops charging. No amount of cord fiddling ever fixes it. Yet, if I close the laptop, set it down as you normally would a laptop and leave the cable in, within about 30 minutes, my laptop starts charging once more.
Now, what I think:
I think the solder holding the charging port in place has stopped doing its job, and that my charging port doesn't sit in place right when I move the laptop around in odd positions. When I let it sit for a little while, the charging port re-centers, and the current starts flowing properly once more.
To note, I tried two different chargers, one from a computer that uses a charger identical to mine, and I ran into the same issues. As well, fiddling with the charger in absolutely any way does not seem to yield any result. That means the charger is likely entirely innocent.
To put my mind at ease, since I absolutely can not afford a new computer, but a simple repair could easily be taken care of by the right people for relatively cheap:
How likely is it that my charging port is connected to the motherboard (as in, physically connected to the degree that when broken, the entire motherboard has to be replaced), and that there's motherboard damage? Based on the odd charging issues only when the computer is angled, and it seeming to charge again only after the computer has essentially had time to settle, I'd like to say this is unlikely at least for my computer. I'm not willing to open it myself and look though, due to not exactly feeling competent enough to dismantle my computer and put it back together right.
Am I at least potentially on the right track? Because I figure if it's just the solder, it's probably a cheap repair.
Thanks in advance for any help, even if it's just affirmation that I'm not entirely stupid.
