Thursday, September 6, 2012

My annoyances with computer problems

Allright, this will be my last post regarding this subject.

First of all, I'm using an asus X73S model laptop.

Around two months or so ago, the power supply to my laptop started acting a bit wonky, the adaptor plug had to be inserted at a particular angle to work, and even then was unstable.
Eventually it became necessary to apply pressure to get the thing to work properly, gradually more and more pressure to be specific.
There was also a sign I had ignored at the time, it became increasingly harder to pull the plug out.
When I noticed the plug of the adaptor also started heating up, I really started to get worried and started to recharge in short bursts.

After a while, the following happened:
Result

What I found when I took out the pin was that it was coated with burned plastic, and the plug for the adaptor also happened to have a plastic layer on the inside

Last friday, when I tried to take it to the store, they told me, as expected, that the general treatment is to simply swap out the motherboard for 300-400€.
I went to a smaller computer store, and they said they would repair it by swapping out the dc power jack for around 115€, but the lady was rather rude and absolutely fixated on the fact that we were at fault for the damages. (If she hadn't started repeating this, she'd probably be around 80€ richer right now.)
I then went to another store where I just ordered a new dc power jack for 25€, which arrived yesterday.

Because I didn't have any desoldering tools at hand, I had to destroy the broken part to be able to solder the pins out.
The replacement part did have a smaller cross section that the original part, which would've been a problem if I had intended to use my old adaptor (no thanks, don't want to ruin this jack too.) instead of this universal adaptor I still had lying around here.
In the end it all worked out and now my laptop is charging perfectly.