Laptop problem

[fozzy]

Recently i was given a non-working Acer Aspire 1802 wsmi. It was minus the hardrive and the power supply is a bit battered, but apart from that it seems ok. It would switch on and post up until the point of trying to load the operating system. Obviously without the hardrive it fails to boot.

The machine has been sat doing nothing for a couple of weeks whilst i got around to sorting out a hardrive. The drive arrived this morning but before i put the drive in, i thought i would go into the bios and change the boot sequence. Got as far as the bios screen and was prompted for a password, of which i don't have :/

I turn around to my desktop to Google the default password for a phoenix bios, find a couple that may work, turn back to the laptop and it has shut down. I try the power button again and the machine attempts to power up but dies within around 4-5 seconds. This happens every time, with or without the charger plugged in.

At first i thought maybe the charger was knackered, i don't think it's that because the charge light appears on the laptop. So now, I'm at a loss as to what to attempt next. What do you reckon? Throw it in the bin?

Any help appreciated.

 

[fozzy]

from experience this is a battery problem, ebay a new one

But surely the laptop should draw power from the power pack itself? If i use my laptop (the one I'm on now) and plug it into the mains, i can take the battery off the machine all together, but it will still work.

The reason i mentioned the battery charge light working on the laptop, was to show that power is getting from the power pack, to the machine. Looking like I'm gonna strip it and bay it

 

[fozzy]

Thanks for that Tweak, this sounds more feasible, i guess it's going in the bin.