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Question

Did my laptop break?

Aug 14, 2018 12:12PM PDT

The problem:
Was watching Netflix with it plugged in, as per usual. Mom came in and started talking to me, sometimes this happens, and laptop goes to sleep due to unuse.
Normally, I could move the touch pad or click buttons and it would turn back on.
This time, nope.
I tried everything. Closed it, pressed the power button. Held down the power button. Unplugged it, tried these things again. Took the battery out. Plugged it back in. Tried these things again.
Asked a friend, he said maybe the battery overcharged and to let it die. So I put the battery back in, let it sit a day or two, plugged it in and tried all these things again.

Nothing happened. (and no, it didn't give me a blue screen of death)

So I left it alone and decided to try to save my money to take it to a fixit shop or buy a new battery.
Well, life happened, and a year later I'm like, "Oh sh*t I never fixed my laptop" so I asked a different friend what he thought about it, including the advice from the other friend about the battery, and this guy said it sounded like it just died and that I should get a new one. (and then take its hard drive out and USB plug it into my new lappy so that I don't lose all my stuff Sad )
(So I am in the processing of looking for a new one, see my other thread) but now that I am on this forum of computer geeks and professionals, I'm wondering if it really *did* break and if so, why?

What does it sound like to you?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
To find out why, we have to fix it.
Aug 14, 2018 12:31PM PDT

But that's how it works. You left out make, model, how old so I can't do any research. Even with those details I usually pop in a new CMOS battery since it's too cheap a part to fiddle or discuss then do a generic reset (remove power, battery, press and hold the power button for 60 seconds, release, slip in battery, apply power and test.)

More details may show it's a model with known issues or something else.

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update
Aug 15, 2018 2:34PM PDT
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It Lives!
Aug 16, 2018 9:23AM PDT

If it's working, do nothing. But do consider a new CMOS battery since it's possible that the generic reset could have worked.

That model is one of the mass produced HP models that can have issues and maybe short lives.

Outside of basic design flaws the most common failure I run into is a failed HDD. With Windows 10 this isn't as much work as it was before. We install a new drive (SSD most of the time) then install the OS and that's it. Done. I don't know why we see so many of these but "it's a thing."