Weird Story of Troubleshooting a Weird Laptop Issue (Part 1)

Recently, I was a little puzzled by my laptop's battery - sometimes after leaving it plugged in after reaching full charge, it goes empty directly on next boot. A very weird issue? I guess so. I have read quite a lot of battery-related articles in the past and I don't remember one that tells you about a battery randomly hating on you and secretly drains all your charge giving you desperation and frustration next time you attempt to turn it on. It happens so randomly that there is no pattern indicating that it will happen - it just does when it wants to, and of course, it greatly increases the difficulty of getting it troubleshooted. The issue doesn't really affect me from doing my stuff on the laptop since I'm always with a charger, but it's annoying so I would want to fix it if possible.

So, I dropped myself at a computer shop yesterday afternoon, hoping to get a thermal paste replacement on this laptop as well as some consultation on this problem. Two years of non-stop usage without thermal paste replacements doesn't sound too healthy for this laptop in the long term, I still need to rely on it for the next 3 years or more. Laptops are expensive. So here I go...

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"Ding," I pushed open the door with my laptop in my arms. It's not the computer shop I usually go to, my friend recommended this one to me for their surprisingly low prices for computer upgrades and he knows that I need it. "Are you sure you are sane using a laptop with only 4GB RAM in 2019?" he once asked. "Do yourself a favor dude, I wonder how you even survive with that," I didn't said anything but replied with a smile instead - who knows, the Linux kernel seems to have some dark tech to face with low RAM situations, 4GB RAM is more than enough for my general use, and it's not like I have a lot of extra cash to spend at the moment. Anyways, I expect this shop to give lower prices than the others for maintenance services I'm looking for too, and that's why I'm here.

"Yes, how can I help you?" One of the staffs approached me as I reach their counter.

"Do you offer laptop services? I want to get a thermal paste replacement for this laptop, probably a battery replacement too. Also, dust cleaning. I guess it really needs it," said myself as I gently placed this flat box of electrical components and dust on the table while the guy at the shop picked up my laptop and took a close look. To be honest, nothing special - it's a normal HP Pavilion laptop with some scratches on the silver-colored cover. All stickers are kept intact and I haven't done my desired customization on it yet even after two years. He then turned the thing around and took a look on the back cover of the laptop where the laptop's information are written. Frankly speaking, I never liked how they wrote the text there, it's like gray on silver...too little contrast for the eyes. I would rather they use a black sticker with those stuff in white text, ugliness doesn't matter since it's on the back cover. Well, the guy's reading it for me anyways, so I guess I shouldn't complain that much...

"It will take a few days to do these for you since we need to order the battery for the replacement," he said while placing the laptop down, "so you might need to leave it over here and we'll contact you after it's done. Oh, and the battery will cost you around RM200, too."

"What if we forget about the battery replacement and just reapply the thermal paste and do the dust cleaning?" I am actually okay with the price for the battery, just that I'm not confident that I can get it back before school starts again. You know, sometimes delivery services can be funny, and it will be even funnier if I can't get it back before I start my 400+km trip again back to university.

"That would be around RM40 to RM50," he looked at the laptop again, "and we still need a day or two for it, since your laptop is pretty compact...it takes time for us to disassemble it and put everything back again. I could return it to you tomorrow if you insist me to rush for it though."

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...that is like half the price people told me that I could get in other shops, I can't believe that my friend actually made a good, valid and legal recommendation to me. I'm perfectly fine with my laptop being on their side for a day too, since I have completed the game I'm currently on so there's no cliffhanging. Everything is nice. Great.

But I still need to have the consultation done. "By the way, do you have any idea why sometimes my battery goes empty unexpectedly? Like sometimes after I use the laptop with it plugged in at full charge, it gives me an empty battery on next boot."

He gave me a pretty iconic confused look as I expected. Just that I didn't expect it to be that iconic.

"Can I boot the laptop up for a look?" Probably he wants to see if it is actually working or wants to see the expected battery life, "sure," I said.

He lifted the laptop lid and pressed the power button while I was asking myself if I should let him boot into my Linux OS or Windows instead. I mean, he would probably be utterly confused by the boot menu when it shows up so I might have to prepare myself for that. But then the screen doesn't seem to show a thing after a few seconds.

"Uh, probably the power button isn't that responsive, let me try." I took over the machine and tried powering it on myself. But seriously, there aren't any responses. The LED light on the power button does not light itself up too.

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"Weird..." I kept on trying but it just isn't working.

"Could it be that the battery is empty?"

"I'm not sure, it never became empty like that. I was using it while plugged in yesterday." I'm pretty sure that I was sharing an equally confused face compared to his iconic one just now. This is really getting out of control. "I can try getting my charger here and try it again. Probably it's really empty."

"Yeah, you should try that. You sure the battery isn't dead?" He double-confirms with me.

"I'm sure that it is at least working. Normally I can still get 2 hours of battery life from it on a full charge."

"I guess it's not a battery issue...probably some components on the motherboard are faulty. The ones that are responsible for the charging."

"You sure?"

"I mean, probably." He then did some counting on the fingers, "and replacing the board would cost around RM300 to RM400. Is this still under warranty?"

Gosh, seriously? Possibly a motherboard issue? I mean, he has his point. I once checked the charging values with some Linux utility and the charging pattern is sometimes weird. You don't see a battery that takes 40 minutes to go from 98% to 100% every day, and the situation only happens once every a few weeks. I am no expert in hardware stuff but who knows what the motherboard is trying to do...probably something funny is going inside the board, I don't know. And hardware issues are always a headache since you need to pay to get them solved literally every single time, I don't like that.

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"I think it's still under warranty, it should last till at least March." That's like a month more, "I remember HP allows us to check for warranty status online, can you do it for me now?"

"Sure."

He took my laptop over to his desk and started to check for it. "It lasts till mid April," returning the laptop to me, "I would suggest you to claim the warranty instead of letting us repair it, it'll potentially save you a lot of money. Just throw the laptop at their office and tell them that it randomly doesn't boot and let them do their job."

I responded with a "what" face, "You sure that's gonna work?" I mean, I don't even have proof that it is a valid issue. It happens so randomly that I cannot let it happen on the spot if required.

"Yeah, they are used to that, just trust me."

I'm not sure why that sounded very promising and assuring to me.

After thanking the staff, I went home and plugged the laptop into its charger. The charging LED indicator turned red, I booted into the diagnostic firmware of the laptop and it tells me that the battery is at 0% charge...wonderful. It's really the first time.

At night, I booted up the laptop again. The battery is working fine, no hiccups, and I directed my web browser to HP's Customer Support page without it dying in the process. Not really expecting much, I just want them to tell me what I can do with my currently active warranty. Probably give me a contact that I can use to reach some technician or an address for me to send this laptop to for diagnosis and repair.

Typed in my laptop's serial number, my personal details and a brief statement of my question, hit the enter button and here we go. It didn't took too long before it got me connected with a customer support agent,

"Hi, anything I can help?"

To be continued.

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