Laptop won't turn on if the battery is plugged in (black magic?)  

rambomhtri said:

After like 24 hours trying, turning it on and watching how it gets stuck with the black screen, not reaching even BIOS, 5 minutes ago suddenly showed the BIOS post and initialized correctly. I'm not turning it off ever again, hahaha. Let's see how much I last with this freaking MoBo. I hate it so much right now, but I'm so excited and happy it turned on. I don't want to spend $90 in a MoBo because this laptop is way too old to spend so much, but I neither don't want to spend like $1200 in a desktop PC I'd be satisfied with. I'm on this thin line right now of too lazy to spend like $1200 in a proper modern PC (yeah, I either spend whatever it takes to make a good modern PC, or I spend nothing), and I'm aware this laptop is dying so $90 is kind of a waste.
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How is it behaving?
I have an issue with mine (Y510P) and it does not charge the battery nor it turns on only with the charger. I have tested both the battery and the charger on another computer, and they are fine.

One technician is looking at this behavior. The first time he fixed and it was charging. But it stopped charging again after I removed the charger and reconnected it. I have spent $$$ for the repair alreayd and I am wondering if it's worth to buy a MOBO at this time of the pandemic.

Karksar said:

How is it behaving?
I have an issue with mine (Y510P) and it does not charge the battery nor it turns on only with the charger. I have tested both the battery and the charger on another computer, and they are fine.

One technician is looking at this behavior. The first time he fixed and it was charging. But it stopped charging again after I removed the charger and reconnected it. I have spent $$$ for the repair alreayd and I am wondering if it's worth to buy a MOBO at this time of the pandemic.

I tried in late February to turn it on because accidentally I unplugged it from the wall. Tried for a whole week, turning on, black screen, nothing, again, try... I gave up after a week.

Totally forgot about it until 2 weeks ago, that I tried to turn it on again, and MAGIC, it turned on, and it's been plugged in since then. The laptop works fine, performs as expected, but I know that if I turn it off, I'm gonna regret it. So, I'm moving all the data, do some backups, and I'm gonna replace it. I believe it's the MoBo, somehow it's broken in the "turn on" process, but randomly, and this is the most weird issue I've ever faced. 99.9% of the time in PC issues, if it works, it works, if it doesn't, it doesn't. It's so, so, so very weird that suddenly the laptop can turn on correctly and work as fine as always.

It must be the MoBo, no other thing can behave like that. I'd buy a MoBo for this laptop for about $60-90, only if I know how to replace it myself. If you are not savvy about fixing hardware and need to go to a store, that repair is going to be like $180 total, in which case I'd just buy a new modern laptop. I would not spend more than $150 repairing this laptop, better to save that money and buy a newer one. Of course, if you need it now and it's the best you can do, change the MoBo and go on.

rambomhtri said:

I tried in late February to turn it on because accidentally I unplugged it from the wall. Tried for a whole week, turning on, black screen, nothing, again, try... I gave up after a week.

Totally forgot about it until 2 weeks ago, that I tried to turn it on again, and MAGIC, it turned on, and it's been plugged in since then. The laptop works fine, performs as expected, but I know that if I turn it off, I'm gonna regret it. So, I'm moving all the data, do some backups, and I'm gonna replace it. I believe it's the MoBo, somehow it's broken in the "turn on" process, but randomly, and this is the most weird issue I've ever faced. 99.9% of the time in PC issues, if it works, it works, if it doesn't, it doesn't. It's so, so, so very weird that suddenly the laptop can turn on correctly and work as fine as always.

It must be the MoBo, no other thing can behave like that. I'd buy a MoBo for this laptop for about $60-90, only if I know how to replace it myself. If you are not savvy about fixing hardware and need to go to a store, that repair is going to be like $180 total, in which case I'd just buy a new modern laptop. I would not spend more than $150 repairing this laptop, better to save that money and buy a newer one. Of course, if you need it now and it's the best you can do, change the MoBo and go on.

What has broke in the MOBO is the battery charger capacitors. But I guess it's just much better to replace the whole MOBO.

You are definitely right. The best I can do is do hold off and save for a new computer. If I have some money laying around, I buy the MOBO.

It's crazy that our machines have turned into a piece of paper.

Karksar said:

What has broke in the MOBO is the battery charger capacitors. But I guess it's just much better to replace the whole MOBO.

You are definitely right. The best I can do is do hold off and save for a new computer. If I have some money laying around, I buy the MOBO.

It's crazy that our machines have turned into a piece of paper.

Wait, how did you diagnose that?
It MUST be more complicated than that because remember:
1. When the battery is plugged in, it won't boot. Well, that's a lie, I've managed to turn it on, just sometimes, but most of the time, inserting the battery means no power on at all.
2. If AC plugged, it will boot always, but it won't even POST bios, it will freeze in a black screen. Not always, though, you can get lucky one day and suddenly it starts as if it was perfect.
3. Once it starts correctly, every piece of hardware works, no problems in GPU, CPU, power, or anything.

A simple cap fail won't make it behave like that, will it?

Mine is not a paper stone, I've not turned it off since it started correctly a few days ago, I haven't turned it off, and it works fine. I simply can't unplug it. It can restart perfectly fine, by the way. All the problems are related to booting up from a turned off state.

rambomhtri said:

Wait, how did you diagnose that?
It MUST be more complicated than that because remember:
1. When the battery is plugged in, it won't boot. Well, that's a lie, I've managed to turn it on, just sometimes, but most of the time, inserting the battery means no power on at all.
2. If AC plugged, it will boot always, but it won't even POST bios, it will freeze in a black screen. Not always, though, you can get lucky one day and suddenly it starts as if it was perfect.
3. Once it starts correctly, every piece of hardware works, no problems in GPU, CPU, power, or anything.
A simple cap fail won't make it behave like that, will it?
Mine is not a paper stone, I've not turned it off since it started correctly a few days ago, I haven't turned it off, and it works fine. I simply can't unplug it. It can restart perfectly fine, by the way. All the problems are related to booting up from a turned off state.

An AC component present on any DC bus on a complex digital device such as a pc will cause immeasurable and erratic behavior. As far as I know, the typical life expectancy of electrolytic capacitors is somewhere around 2000 hours +/- or 5.5 years.

The internal power supply within the device will contain electrolytic capacitors used to filter hum or AC ripple. These capacitors will decay over time especially if the environment is warm. The dielectric layer between the plates (rolled foil) dries out over time (faster with heat) and the capacitance value decays. Eventually the capacitor is not able to adequately filter out the AC component and any resultant AC component will as previously mentioned, screw up digital circuitry.

That's just one theory that could apply.

Here's another potential idea that could support the pc not starting for a period of time after the battery is removed.
A semi-conductor device within the battery charging circuitry has a failing component such as a voltage regulator.

Connecting the battery with an external power-pack enables the internal charger, the faulty voltage regulator suffers a thermal shutdown and kills the main or secondary B+ line, some LEDs might work but the pc will never boot or POST.

Wait 5 minutes for the faulty regulator to cool off, remove the battery so the charger circuit is no longer active and presto, the PC boots.

Now that was an overly simplistic theoretical explanation for a relatively complex device. Consider there are most likely 2, 3 or 4 different voltage regulators all regulating a different voltage bus, (-5vdc, +5vdc etc) for different devices within this PC. A failing semi-conductor anywhere in this device could cause erratic behavior as you've presented.


Given your description, my money is a fault with the internal charging circuitry. If the internal power supply is built with micro-circuitry like most devices today, it's most likely not worth your grief to repair. I've had some limited success with these type repairs but they're often a huge PITA!

Move your data, pop the top off and use a laser sighted thermometer to measure for hot spots. I'm retired and occasionally I might embark on one of these adventures, maybe. My Dell laptop was a huge PITA to disassemble/re-assemble. I'd use it as a paper-weight before pasting the cpu again.

W10 Tweaker said:

An AC component present on any DC bus on a complex digital device such as a pc will cause immeasurable and erratic behavior. As far as I know, the typical life expectancy of electrolytic capacitors is somewhere around 2000 hours +/- or 5.5 years.

The internal power supply within the device will contain electrolytic capacitors used to filter hum or AC ripple. These capacitors will decay over time especially if the environment is warm. The dielectric layer between the plates (rolled foil) dries out over time (faster with heat) and the capacitance value decays. Eventually the capacitor is not able to adequately filter out the AC component and any resultant AC component will as previously mentioned, screw up digital circuitry.

That's just one theory that could apply.

Here's another potential idea that could support the pc not starting for a period of time after the battery is removed.
A semi-conductor device within the battery charging circuitry has a failing component such as a voltage regulator.

Connecting the battery with an external power-pack enables the internal charger, the faulty voltage regulator suffers a thermal shutdown and kills the main or secondary B+ line, some LEDs might work but the pc will never boot or POST.

Wait 5 minutes for the faulty regulator to cool off, remove the battery so the charger circuit is no longer active and presto, the PC boots.

Now that was an overly simplistic theoretical explanation for a relatively complex device. Consider there are most likely 2, 3 or 4 different voltage regulators all regulating a different voltage bus, (-5vdc, +5vdc etc) for different devices within this PC. A failing semi-conductor anywhere in this device could cause erratic behavior as you've presented.


Given your description, my money is a fault with the internal charging circuitry. If the internal power supply is built with micro-circuitry like most devices today, it's most likely not worth your grief to repair. I've had some limited success with these type repairs but they're often a huge PITA!

Move your data, pop the top off and use a laser sighted thermometer to measure for hot spots. I'm retired and occasionally I might embark on one of these adventures, maybe. My Dell laptop was a huge PITA to disassemble/re-assemble. I'd use it as a paper-weight before pasting the cpu again.

Amazing, thanks for the ideas. I have some knowledge about repairing PC's, mostly software. I do have also "advanced" knowledge about electricity and electronics, but not enough to repair these kinds of failures, and my knowledge is not applied to notebooks but broadly and generally.

About the laptop, yeah, I totally forgot about repairing it, I just switched to desktop, backed up the data, no more laptops for me (I've always been a laptop guy, not anymore, specially since powerful smartphones exist).

I've already thought about "well, may be something is getting so hot it's failing to start". Not the problem here. During the week I tried to boot it up, 5 months ago, I already checked if leaving the laptop turned off a whole night would fix it. Proved to be a false premise. One of the first times I faced this problem, it boot up after 3h or so trying to boot it up, constantly pressing the ON button after the black screen turned off. So, after 3h, whatever component was causing the problem, was hot, so it's not a temperature problem.

I'm telling you, this problem is like black magic. The other day I saw the laptop and gave it a try, after 5 months. It just booted up fine. Today I accidentally unplugged the AC, and now it's again stuck in the pre-POST black screen.

Is it possible to inspect the power leads to the motherboard and test,with a meter,if the connections are intermittent?
Power connectors,plugs or sockets,along with faulty wiring will be the cause of intermittent operation.
If power is available to the motherboard,then another possibility is the monitor connection.

Run the Lenovo hardware custom hardware diagnostics (all boxes, full scans) overnight.

Post images of the tests performed with results into the thread.

Take Screenshot in Windows 10
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/...re-screenshots
How to Upload and Post Screenshots and Files at Ten Forums

OK, points:

1. The screen is not the problem, what I mean when I say it turns on but the screen is black, is that there's no even a BIOS post, it freezes before showing the very first BIOS screen. I've tried external monitors, same result.

2. The charger works fine, I've tried it in another laptop and works just fine. Besides, I've tested other chargers and also checked the voltage, 19.5V, alright.

3. I can't run anything because it does not boot up. After almost 2 weeks working fine, I accidentally unplugged it and now it's not booting up again. Besides, I've removed the HDD and formatted it, so I would need to install again Windows 10, etc...

Although, now that I think about that, it doesn't really matter that it doesn't have an HDD anymore, the problem happens BEFORE it calls the HDD. I can still test it since what matter is that it must POST and then display that there's no OS device. Right now it still shows the black screen before POST.

I even tried to understand some schematics I found, but it's way more complex to understand than I thought. Ideally, I would simply plug the AC, have the MOBO in front of me, opened, and with my multimeter start checking voltages, but I don't know what to test, the values, etc...

I found this fix and seems to work, from tinhow on lenovo forums:
-Hey man I have the same problems. Try remove the battery and hold on the power button for 30 sec. Put back in the battery and press start. If that doesnt work remove the ultrabay card and then turn on...it should boot up. After that put back in the ultrabay and then turn on. I cant fix this **bleep** problem otherwise and nobody here seems to have a fix-

original link:
-https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-P-Y-and-Z-series/Lenovo-Y510P-not-turning-on/td-p/1568864