x201 dies as power cord unplugged

[harryK]

The laptop works fine, the battery is perfect. If I unplug the power cord it just dies abruptly and doesn't start anymore, unless I take the battery out and put it back. Works fine when on battery, works fine while plugged in, the battery charges and discharges normally. Tried with different batteries, same result. Happens under different operating systems, even when in BIOS settings. Definitly a hardware/BIOS issue.

What could I try?

Thanks :-/

[rkawakami]

Given all of that, probably a new motherboard. There must be some sort of glitch in the power controller circuitry on the board. I'm assuming that at some point in the past, the system worked normally. Do you know if there was any unusual event which preceded this? Liquid spill on the system? Power surge? BIOS or Embedded Controller update?

[harryK]

Given all of that, probably a new motherboard. There must be some sort of glitch in the power controller circuitry on the board. I'm assuming that at some point in the past, the system worked normally. Do you know if there was any unusual event which preceded this? Liquid spill on the system? Power surge? BIOS or Embedded Controller update?

I bought this motherboard two days ago from eBay. Had to update the machine type using the "hardware maintenance diskette" because it was throwing errors 2200 and 2201. I also updated the BIOS, but the problem was there before.

I'm just wondering if there is something that I could try before sending it back...

Thank you

[rkawakami]

Well, about the only thing I can think of is to remove the main battery, CMOS (backup) battery and AC adapter for a couple of minutes, re-install them, boot the system, enter the correct date and time and then load the BIOS defaults. That's about all you can do to initialize the board. If that doesn't solve your problem, return the board.

As an aside, I would not do anything to a piece of hardware that changes it in any way from when it was received from an eBay seller until it has been confirmed working as it is supposed to. The seller could now claim that you did something to the board (BIOS update, HMD, etc.) that caused the issue.

[harryK]

Well, about the only thing I can think of is to remove the main battery, CMOS (backup) battery and AC adapter for a couple of minutes, re-install them, boot the system, enter the correct date and time and then load the BIOS defaults. That's about all you can do to initialize the board. If that doesn't solve your problem, return the board.

Well, I guess that's it. I tried and nothing changed.

As an aside, I would not do anything to a piece of hardware that changes it in any way from when it was received from an eBay seller until it has been confirmed working as it is supposed to. The seller could now claim that you did something to the board (BIOS update, HMD, etc.) that caused the issue.

You are perfectly right. The fact is that it looked like it was working fine.. :-/