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General discussion

Compaq Armada will not power up

Feb 26, 2004 8:10PM PST

Hi there,

I have a compaq armada laptop. The battery will not charge and I am unable to switch on the computer even if the power supply is plugged in. It happened before once but then started working again. It is fine once there is power into it. Please help?

Carolyn.

Discussion is locked

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Re:Compaq Armada will not power up
Feb 26, 2004 8:51PM PST

that sounds like a bad conector on the motherboard time for a service shop to look at it

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I use one of these to get at the hard disk files.
Feb 26, 2004 9:44PM PST
http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=HD-108

That and a desktop and we save the files that the owner didn't. Cheap.

As to the laptop. Remove all removable parts, put it all back together and try again. Try without the battery. No? Time for the repair shop. Just my fair warning -> Don't take a laptop in such a condition to the corner PC repair shop. They do desktops well, but not this one.

Bob
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Re:I use one of these to get at the hard disk files.
Feb 27, 2004 12:41AM PST

>Don't take a laptop in such a condition to the corner PC repair shop

I agree, under warranty or not.. if you need to repair it send it back to Compaq, there are some cowboys out there who will trash your laptop (from experience).

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Re:Compaq Armada will not power up
Feb 26, 2004 11:15PM PST

If you have warranty still, use it. If not, remove battery and clean contacts on both, the laptop and battery. Make sure of no collapsed contacts and retry. If you had the battery more than 12-18mos. already consider a replacement. Batteries are fickle items so follow any recovery hints/tips that Compaq offers at thier support website. There's nothing more to do for the end-user other than take to repair center or such.

good luck -----Willy

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Re:Re:Compaq Armada will not power up
Feb 27, 2004 7:16AM PST

Is the power adapter good? Compaq had a recall on certain versions of these and they do go bad.

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Re: Compaq Armada will not power up
Aug 22, 2005 10:17PM PDT

I know I am reviving a thread that is 18 months old, but I recently purchased a Compaq Armada M700 giving the exact same problems described here!

It just starts working again if you leave the laptop for a while. I have found no sollutions yet, but a few explanations came after a few hours of googling.

The battery is fine - the LEDs on the battery shows it is fully charged, battery monitoring tools pick up the battery as normal. Dignostics shows all the information that you could possibly want to know about the battery, yet it is as dead as a doornail if you pull the AC adapter!

Apparently there is a problem with the micro controller inside the battery. It crashes and doesn't want to discharge the battery because the battery thinks it is still charging. The cells are still fine. If this is true or not, I don't know - but it is the *only* explanation I could find...

I hope someone can help out with this!

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EBay.
Aug 22, 2005 10:54PM PDT

There's quite a bit of Armada parts out on ebay. You can try another mainboard or battery to see which it is.

Bob