Laptop motherboard, what could be wrong?

Soldato
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3 Apr 2007
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I have a laptop where the USB ports don't work, laptop is still good to use. Browsing the bay of e I noticed a seller in Germany had a replacement motherboard, checked all the details and it was the same so ordered it. The board arrived last week so over the weekend I installed it and it's mis-behaving but I don't know what could be wrong.

Essentially what happens is that if I power up the laptop with the battery plugged in, it loads Windows 10, I then logon and then around 30-45 seconds later the screen just goes blank and then around 5 seconds later I can see the power indicator goes off. I can then immediately start it back up but it does the same thing. I thought it might be heat related so I reseated the heatsink and installed Coretemp but the temps are fine. Whilst messing about I noticed that if I power the laptop with the battery removed then it works fine, temps are fine and I can use it for however long. With the battery removed I've even reinstalled Windows and also put Windows 7 on but I get the same problem.

Now the battery is fine in that I get around 2 hours from it with all battery saver options disabled and the old motherboard charged and used the battery fine. In fact if I remove the mains and just use the battery the new motherboard works fine and runs until it runs out of juice.

For the time being I've put back the old motherboard and everything is back to the way it was and the battery is being charged as normal. So what the hell is going on? Looking around the internet most seem to suggest that the battery should be replaced but that works fine as far as I'm concerned. There is a suggestion that the charge circuitry on the new motherboard maybe faulty but comparing the 2 boards I can't visually see anything that looks bad or blown.

The new motherboard was supposed to be "unused" but when it arrived it was dirty and dusty so it looks like it may have been pulled from a faulty laptop? I've contacted the seller but to date have had no reply.
 
Well I ordered another battery which arrived yesterday and I get exactly the same results so it looks like the motherboard is faulty.

Turning into something expensive now as it looks like it'll cost around 20 euros to post the board back to Germany also :(
 
As I said above I tried the 2nd battery and got the same, the seller decided to refund me and no need to send the faulty board back which would have cost around 20 euros so a bit of a relief as it was turning out to be quite expensive. To the seller, they were great after my first message to them and helped where they could but admitted they didn't know what might be wrong with the board. I did compare both and couldn't see anything wrong.
 
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