Laptop died with no warning

OK, my girlfriend's laptop just suddenly shutdown with no warning. The screen went black first and then the power on lights turned off. It was fully charged (plugged in to the wall), no weird hard drive noises, no blue screen of death or anything. It just simply doesn't turn on. We thought it was the battery, so we purchased a new one but that didn't help at all. But one weird thing is that when you plug in the cord for charging the computer into the wall socket, then into the computer (turned off completely/dead), I can hear a little clicking noise. Very feint. Any ideas on what I should be looking for?

clicking , in my limited experience, could be anything. It could be a cd/dvd reader/writer, it could be a dying HDD and everything else. It sounds as if the connection between your battery and the laptop is crooked though. I simply suggest taking it to a hardware store and let them look at it.

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Originally Posted by Mut

OK, my girlfriend's laptop just suddenly shutdown with no warning. The screen went black first and then the power on lights turned off. It was fully charged (plugged in to the wall), no weird hard drive noises, no blue screen of death or anything. It just simply doesn't turn on. We thought it was the battery, so we purchased a new one but that didn't help at all. But one weird thing is that when you plug in the cord for charging the computer into the wall socket, then into the computer (turned off completely/dead), I can hear a little clicking noise. Very feint. Any ideas on what I should be looking for?

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It might help if you give the laptop make and model.

I would guess that it was an issue with the power supply in the laptop. If it was fully charged, I don't know what else would be interfering with the energy to all the components. It may also be some hardware got knocked out of place. Sometimes computers won't start up if a component might get damaged. I had that problem with my video card falling out of the slot on my desktop thanks to dell's poor weight support in their case design.

A failing hard drive would probably still boot, you'd get a boot screen and then a hard drive failure warning would stop it. Have someone open it up and look at the components.

I once saw the inside of an early Dell PC.. I'm still crying :P Dell is great for companies, but individuals should really not start with them, imho.

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A failing hard drive would probably still boot, you'd get a boot screen and then a hard drive failure warning would stop it. Have someone open it up and look at the components.

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Yeah of course, was just referring to the ticking. The laptop wasn't turned on, so as I said, and what you said, the PSU is probably bad.

I've had several cases of "this shouldn't be happening" with my PC's in the past though...they don't follow fixed patterns when breaking apart.

For example, my current PC started dropping power before booting windows.

I've litterally replaced every logical part at a friends place and none of these caused the problem.

I expected the PSU to shortcircuit somewhere, at some point, so that was the first thing to replace. Nothing .

If it would be the HD's I'd expect a HD boot failure, we still tried, no success.

Next up RAM..bad RAM usually shows itself during activities, but just in case,we ran a couple checks on it, nothing wrong with it.

Next up, Vidcard. Nothing wrong, nor did any of the PCI cards cause the issue.

Removed the dvd burner, not fixed.

Odds are it is the motherboard, but the model is aged so I'll dump this one on my sisters room, use her old one as a network storage(improve some of the fan's first, godawful noise) and that's why I ordered a new one basically.

Not to mention I'll be playing Age of Conan and WAR soon enough :)

I have to agree with the clicking sound probably being of lesser relevance. Components with moving parts usually aren't critical to turning the system on, and thus they shouldn't kill it. Although some sort of a short-circuit might be able to. Well, I have known power supplies that always make sounds when connected, so it could be just that.

My only experience of an instant death was with an old laptop where the CPU socket somehow got cracked. The computer died always completely when it warmed a bit. Fortunately it was still within the warranty period. I only learned of it anyway when the pros at the shop had studied it for a while and then returned it repaired.

It sounds like something to do with the power supply of the laptop. The clicking may be the Power supply trying to start but simply can't. In other terms I don't really think this is something you can fix, and should just bring it in for repair.

Repairing a computer over the internet is like performing brain surgery on the phone.