Laptop Power-up Failure

Professional Idiot · April 11, 2020

Hello all,

I just recently went to use my laptop after a few months of sitting in a safe place, and upon attempting to turn it on it seemed to hit an error I can't seem to diagnose.

When booting up, I could hear the hard drive spin up, as well as the DVD drive. However, the DVD drive kept turning on repeatedly every few seconds like it wanted to load something, and the screen continued to stay black with the most faint hint of light as if the screen wanted to turn on too. Assuming it was a hard drive issue, I ordered an SSD and attempted again. Still, the DVD drive just keeps seeming to turn on, as if the computer is attempting to boot itself every couple seconds. I opened the DVD drive manually with the button, and then tried again, still nothing except for the screen faintly turning off and on again every couple seconds. Tapping delete, F11, escape, or any other button didn't change a thing and I can't seem to get to the BIOS whatsoever.

The laptop is an Asus X550JX:

Intel i7-4720HQ, Nvidia GTX 950M, 12GB DDR3 1600MHz ram, and now a 500 GB Samsung 860 Evo SSD.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Edit:

After replacing the internal button battery, trying different boot devices, tapping many different keys upon hitting the power button, and a handful of other troubleshooting attempts, I finally came to a conclusion.

After charging up the battery fully (confirmed by hardware light on the laptop) and being able to have the computer go through the same problems as AC power, I left it to sit for about 24 hours. When coming back, the battery appeared to be completely dead. Not only that but there was a high pitched tone coming from inside the laptop similar to that of a tube TV. As best as I can guess, there is a faulty capacitor or a regulator (like user Zm1TD guessed), which caused the abnormal battery drain and the startup process to occur about once a second after the power was turned on.

Solution: new laptop!

Edited April 16, 2020 by Professional Idiot
Issue resolved

Arttu89 · April 12, 2020

I would try removing the battery if possible, if it's not easily removable you can try opening the bottom cover and physically disconnecting the battery from the motherboard, then try running the laptop on the AC adaptor only. If you don't want to go that route yet you can try letting it charge for a while and see if that makes a difference.

Often if you put your laptop in sleep/hibernate before you leave it to sit or the battery just isn't in the best condition and it's left unused for a long time, it can lead to some odd errors/problems when you try to get a laptop back up and running.

Professional Idiot · April 12, 2020

1 hour ago, Arttu89 said:

I would try removing the battery if possible, if it's not easily removable you can try opening the bottom cover and physically disconnecting the battery from the motherboard, then try running the laptop on the AC adaptor only. If you don't want to go that route yet you can try letting it charge for a while and see if that makes a difference.

Often if you put your laptop in sleep/hibernate before you leave it to sit or the battery just isn't in the best condition and it's left unused for a long time, it can lead to some odd errors/problems when you try to get a laptop back up and running.

So I tried using the AC adapter only and that didn't make any difference. I let the battery charge for about 10 minutes to try battery only, and that didn't make a difference either. The lights on the laptop seem to indicate it's pinging the SSD every couple seconds, matching everything else with the exact same rhythm.

Beyond that, I've tried any combination of the following:

- AC only

- AC and battery

- Battery only

- DVD tray open at the start

- Shutting the tray after I've powered it up

- Starting with it closed

- Tapping/holding F11, delete, or escape right when I turn it on

- The same but after ten seconds of waiting

I'm at a loss for what to try next, but I'll leave it to charge for a few hours to see if that improves anything. Admittedly I don't remember if I last turned it off with a full shutdown or just in sleep mode so it's definitely a possibility I messed it up that way. What are the chances it's something like the CMOS battery?

Zm1TDkSnQkY4KEqskCARSBpk · April 12, 2020

That sounds like an issue with an internal voltage regulator or capacitor. Did you check to make sure that all voltage rails are at the appropriate values?

Arttu89 · April 12, 2020

9 minutes ago, Professional Idiot said:

So I tried using the AC adapter only and that didn't make any difference. I let the battery charge for about 10 minutes to try battery only, and that didn't make a difference either. The lights on the laptop seem to indicate it's pinging the SSD every couple seconds, matching everything else with the exact same rhythm.

Beyond that, I've tried any combination of the following:

- AC only

- AC and battery

- Battery only

- DVD tray open at the start

- Shutting the tray after I've powered it up

- Starting with it closed

- Tapping/holding F11, delete, or escape right when I turn it on

- The same but after ten seconds of waiting

I'm at a loss for what to try next, but I'll leave it to charge for a few hours to see if that improves anything. Admittedly I don't remember if I last turned it off with a full shutdown or just in sleep mode so it's definitely a possibility I messed it up that way. What are the chances it's something like the CMOS battery?

In my experience, due to the specifics of how laptops are built, they tend to run into their own peculiar issues occasionally. If you can get to the BIOS battery and force a CMOS reset I'd give it a try. If you think the event pattern points to the SSD, you can also try taking it out and starting the machine without the SSD just to see if it changes anything and gets you further along (ie. even a screen saying "No boot device detected" would be a step forward in this situation and would allow further troubleshooting).

Professional Idiot · April 12, 2020

30 minutes ago, Zm1TDkSnQkY4KEqskCARSBpk said:

That sounds like an issue with an internal voltage regulator or capacitor. Did you check to make sure that all voltage rails are at the appropriate values?

Sadly I don't have the tools to check anything along the lines of voltage values, so beyond physically checking the motherboard I wouldn't know how to address any problems along those lines.

28 minutes ago, Arttu89 said:

In my experience, due to the specifics of how laptops are built, they tend to run into their own peculiar issues occasionally. If you can get to the BIOS battery and force a CMOS reset I'd give it a try. If you think the event pattern points to the SSD, you can also try taking it out and starting the machine without the SSD just to see if it changes anything and gets you further along (ie. even a screen saying "No boot device detected" would be a step forward in this situation and would allow further troubleshooting).

I'll definitely try pulling the SSD to see how it responds to not having a boot device. From there I'll try everything again with the original hard drive and run through the same combinations of startup to see if somehow anything changes. I'll keep the CMOS reset as a last call since that'll take a bit more dismantling.