fix laptop problems

How to Conserve Your Laptop Battery Power During Travel

Thanks to smart battery technology, your laptop  can be programmed  to warn you when laptop battery is low. The idea is to act fast on those warnings when they appear — and to take them seriously! Dally at your own risk. It’s your data that you could lose!

The real trick, of course, is to ration what laptop battery power you do have, such as “Dell Latitude D600 Battery” . Here are some tips:

Dell Latitude D600 Battery 6 cells 4400MAH Description:
Voltage: 11.1V
Capacity: 4400mAh
Type: Li-ion, 6 cells
UL certificated cells inside!

*Be mindful of the power-saving timeouts. Setting a Stand By timeout for 15 minutes may be great in the office, but on the road you may want to adjust those times downward.

*Modify the display to use a lower resolution or fewer colors on the road. In fact, for most computing, a resolution of 800 x 600 with 16-bit color is fine. Such a setting uses less video memory, which requires less power to operate and keep cool.

* Mute the speakers! Not only does this strategy save a modicum of laptop batteries power, but it also saves the ears of those next to you from hearing those silly noises that your laptop makes.

*Save some stuff to do when you get back home or reconnect to a power source. Face it: Some stuff can wait. If that 200K file upload isn’t needed immediately, save it for when you’re connected to the fast Internet line back at the office.

*Disable unused devices. If you’re not using the modem, turn it off. If you don’t need the CD/DVD drive, remove its disc. Speaking of which…

*If your laptop’s CD/DVD drive is removable, consider removing it when you go on the road. That saves a bit on weight as well as on power usage.

*Hibernate! When time is short and your laptop has the Hibernation smarts, just hibernate.

Tips of Connecting Your Laptop to a Router

A device called a router  sits between the DSL  or cable  modem  and your laptop  or the rest of the network usually. The routers (rhymes with chowder) are designed to provide an interface between the Internet and your local network. The routers take care of most of the more confusing networking options for you; plus, they provide firewall  protection between the laptops on your network and the rest of the wild, nasty Internet.

Physically, the router is situated between your laptop and the Internet connection or broadband  modem. In the above setup, your laptop would connect directly to the router, not to the modem. (In fact, all computers on the local network connect to the router, not directly to the modem.)

Yea, verily, even in a wireless setting, the connection is the same. In fact, a wireless router connects by wire to the high-speed modem.

Then the rest of the computers on the wireless  network  connect wirelessly to the router. The figure above illustrates the shocking, wireless difference.

Router is configured by logging in to them. The router has an IP address, and you use your Web browser software, such as Internet Explorer, to connect to the router, log in, and set the configurations. Instructions for doing this come with the router.

Resources : http://www.udtek.com

Replacement Toshiba Satellite M55-S139 Battery

Eventually, your laptop’s battery will die. It’s inevitable. Just as humans are subject to death and taxes, laptop batteries are subject to death. (Fortunately, the government hasn’t figured out how to plunder tax money from a battery. Yet.)

If your toshiba laptop battery fails or no longer holds a sufficient charge, you can easily replace it. such as “Toshiba Satellite M55-S139 Battery” Follow these steps:

Toshiba Satellite M55-S139 Battery 6 cells 4400MAH Description:
Voltage: 10.8V
Capacity: 4400mAh
Type: 6 cells
UL certificated cells inside!

1.Turn off your laptop and disconnect the laptop AC adapter.

2.Release the latch or other attachment devices that hold your battery in place.

3.Slide the old laptop battery out of its compartment or storage bay.

Press the release button if there is one and carefully lift the battery out of its compartment.

Avoid touching the contacts on the toshiba laptop battery itself or inside the bay; the oils on your fingertips could reduce the conductivity of the battery.

4、Take the replacement battery out of the box.

5、Slide it into the notch or bay.

6、Close the safety latch to lock it into place.

7、Reconnect the AC adapter for laptop and give the battery a full charge.

Don’t mourn a dead battery! Toss it out!

Keep in mind that batteries are considered to be toxic waste in most communities. You must properly dispose of or recycle dead toshiba laptop batteries according to the rules of your community or jurisdiction. Never just chuck an old computer battery in the trash.

And don’t get all Viking and try to burn your battery, either. That’s just a bad thing.

How to Use a Spare Battery to Make Your Laptop Run Longer

A second, or spare, laptop battery can extend the battery life of your laptop. When your primary battery becomes discharged, insert your spare battery to keep using your laptop.

One option you probably ignored when you bought your laptop was getting a spare battery. This item is a must for someone who is seriously on the road or in a remote location, where a long time is spent away from the power socket. Before you use a spare battery, ensure that it’s fully charged. such as “HP Pavilion DV6700 Battery“

HP/Compaq Pavilion DV6700 Battery 12-cells 8800MAH

If your laptop has some type of quick-swapping ability, when the power gets low, you can just eject your laptop’s original, spent battery and quickly insert the spare battery. But be sure that your laptop can survive such a transplant before you attempt it! Perform a test swap in a noncritical situation, just to be sure.

If your laptop doesn’t have the ability to hot-swap laptop batteries, just turn off (or hibernate) the laptop when the original battery is nearly spent. Remove the old battery, insert the fresh one, and then turn the laptop on again. Keep the following points in mind:

*If you plan on pulling this trick often, get a laptop that supports hot-swapping batteries in the first place.

*Label the batteries with a Sharpie so that you don’t get the two (or more) laptop batteries confused and accidentally insert a dead battery.

*You can buy a spare battery from your dealer or from stores that sell extra batteries, such as udtek.com.

Be wary of generic batteries! Always try to get a manufacturer’s (or manufacturer-approved) battery for your laptop. Get anything less, and you run the risk of setting your laptop ablaze!

How to Test Your Laptop Battery?

How to check charge times for laptop battery?

install all drivers and laptop battery Maximiser ThinkPad configuration software, then open the “Control Panel” ——”Thinkpad Configuration”——”Power Management”——”Battery Information”——”Cycle Count”, then it will show you

How to Test Your Laptop Battery?

Laptop batteries can fail, or over time can lose their ability to hold a charge. If your laptop suddenly stops cooperating, you can usually determine if a bad battery is causing the problem by removing it from its bay (on the bottom or side of the laptop) and running the laptop from the lalptop ac adapter only. If the batteryless laptop runs properly when connected to the adapter, the battery has most likely kicked the bucket, shuffled off its mortal coil, and otherwise become defunct.such as”Dell Inspiron XPS M170 Battery“

Dell Inspiron XPS M170 Battery 9 cells 6600MAH

You can further test this hypothesis by substituting a laptop battery that you know is functioning well from another laptop of the same model. You may be able to borrow a coworker’s battery or take the laptop to a cooperative retailer’s repair counter.

If, in the other hand, your batteryless laptop doesn’t run when connected to the laptop AC adapter, either the adapter or the laptop’s internal electronics have failed. Again, if you can borrow a known-good ac adapter, use it to see if the problem is caused by the cords or converter or if the issue lies deeper within the laptop itself.

How to charge for the new bought laptop?what to do to maintain the laptop battery?

Lithium(hydronium) battery (such as toshiba laptop battery ,compaq laptop battery)needs certain electromotive force inside to keep the activity of internal chemical substances. Therefore, you should charge full and use it up. Generally speaking, the first three charging take about six hours. Charge to 100% is ok then. You should not charge only for a short period of time, when the electric power is less than 10%, charge in time. If you used it up completely, it’ll cause damage to laptop battery; at the same time, if the power is more than 60%, you should not charge as possible as you. The laptop battery which won’t be used for a long, should be used to about 50% power left, and then keep it in room temperature dry environment.

How to Replacing laptop LCD inverter board?

This tutorial would help you solve the problem that Laptop’s LCD Screen was dim. I will explain how to find the inverter of a laptop, but the tips are not aiming for some special brands or models, they should work for most laptops.

Warning: Please make sure that the laptop is not connecting to any power source including the laptop battery and the laptop AC adapter.

Problem: HP /Compaq NC6400 LCD Screen is dark.

Solve: plug the laptop to an external monitor. If the external monitor displays normally, then the problem is from one of these components: LCD backlight, laptop inverter, LCD cable or video board. Further tests have to be conducted to verify the particular component.

In-order to get out the LCD inverter, the laptop LCD screen must be disassembled,

These are the SPECIAL tools for disassemble the laptop. NOT NECESSARY to have them in this case. (A 6-point star screwdriver, a Magnetic screwdriver)

Open the laptop cover.

Check all corners of the Compaq NC6400 laptop display part for potential screws. In this laptop, there are six of them, four screws at the upper line and two of them at the bottom. All of them are hiding beneath the rubber buttons.

(Also check the sides of the display part for screws since the location of the screws vary from model to model. BE VERY CAREFUL. Make sure that you do not miss any screw, you could DAMAGE your laptop cover when you try to open it.)

Move the screwdriver along the LCD frame slowly, this will slide the frame open. (It is not over yet, for this specific model, there are some other places you need to looking into in order to remove the LCD frame)

After remove the cover, the HP/ Compaq NC6400 LCD Screen frame can be removed along with it.

Pulling out the 2 wire cable plug from the inverter.

before do that, first unscrew a small screw that used to secure the inverter in place.

the 2 wire plug is High voltage AC output to light up the fluorescent tube inside the LCD screen.

Two pins is standard for all today LCD screen, but without some type of the TOSHIBA LCD screen.

after remove the 2 wire plug from the inverter. you can move on to another side.

the wire plug is DC current supply from main board. There are many type of the socket on the inverter board and the wire plug.

In this case, there are 7 pins socket receiving electrical current and current signal from the main board.

There is no standard form for the inverter! You must look for the part number as shown on this photo.

Attention: The part number of the replacement cable must match your cable or else they may not compatible thought they may look similar.

Common for laptops: There are many different type of sockets with different number of pins (4 to 8 pins).

How to Remove and replace laptop keyboard

The direction below will help teach you how to remove laptop keyboard and replace it. This article doesn’t cover all models, but you may get a rough meaning, the disassembling steps are proper for most laptops.

Warning:

-If your laptop is still within the promised warrant period, then please don’t take your laptop apart, otherwise, you may lose the promise of quality warrant.

-Before you open your laptop, please first remove the laptop battery and pull off ac adapter for laptop.

-If you break the keyboard faucet on the motherboard by accident, then you’d have to replace the entire motherboard.

-You should take the responsibility of the result.

This is HP/Compaq NC6120 laptop, and this method is also proper for other model laptops.

HP/Compaq NC6120 Keyboard

The indicator cover and the hinge cover are in one piece and is screw-less in this laptop. Many others laptops the hinges cover are separate from the indicator cover.

There are common also that screws are found underneath the indicator cover or behind the hinge covers.

In this case, there’s no need to remove the baffle of the keyboard, however, for many other models, you have to follow the next steps: insert a little screwdriver under the keyboard baffle, lift it carefully and then put plastic clip into it, and then move the laptop replacement keyboard baffle with your fingers; be careful, as some model baffles might be connected to motherboard with cable. If you just pull out the cable incautiously, then you have to plug it back again, to remove the keyboard, it’s not that necessary to disconnect the keyboard baffle from motherboard. You’d just need to release the baffle and then you could see the screws used to fasten the keyboard

Remove screws and latches.

Just as the picture 3 shows, you could find the screws used to fasten keyboard from the back cover of the laptop, 2 in all, and generally, there should be 2 to 4 screws on common laptops. And beside the screw fastening hp laptop keyboard, there marks some sign; under certain circumstance, Hinge cover has screws to frap keyboard. However, this tutorial doesn’t involve relevant case, hope you could notice that.

Push latches downward.

As picture 4 shows below, you could find some latches on the laptop keyboard, total 4 latches, beside the key F1, F4, F8 and F12, use a little flat screwdriver to slide down gently.

And as picture 5 shows below, lift the keyboard from the motherboard, once the HP/Compaq NC6120 Keyboard is moved and the flat connection cable between the keyboard and motherboard exposes. And before you pull the flat connection cable out of interface, first unlock the connection cable-lock.

As picture 6 shows below, it illustrates how to unlock the keyboard cable-lock, and move it 1-2mm cautiously.

Attention:

lift up the cable-lock on both ends by not more than 1mm.
Over lifting would break the clips that function to position the cable in place.

As picture 7 shows below, now it’s the time for the HP NC6120 Keyboard to get off from laptop, and then pull the connection cable out of it. And when install the keyboard, follow the steps above just by the opposite sequence.

Why is laptop battery not holding a charge?

This tutorial would help you solve the problem to press power button even when there’s no power on. I will explain how to find the failure reason for system shutdown of a laptop, but the tips are not aiming for some special brands or models, they should work for most laptops.

HP Pavilion DV6000 Battery

Laptop is completely dead, and new laptop battery cannot charge!

When you plug in the oower adapter and press on the power button, but the laptop has no response, no starting sound, no LED light, no fan rotating, except black screen, there’s nothing else….in all, the laptop is completely broken, then under this circumstance, what can you do?

1.Ensure your wall outlet is working, which laptop AC  adapter could get power from the outlet. But how could you know whether there’s power or not? You’d better find a reading lamp with plug to monitor it, check whether the bulb was lit when you press power button. If you cannot assure, then try another wall outlet.

2.Unplug power cord from an AC adapter for laptop, and then plug in the power cord back forcibly, to try turning on the laptop again.

Most power cord has a bad connected with power adapter’s outlet, which caused the problem, so you should ensure that the two ends of the cord are completely plugged into the wall outlet and AC adapter power outlet.

3.If the power lights still off, then you must change a new power cord and test the AC  adapter laptop again, ensure the input voltage is normal, you could use voltage meter to test the power adapter.

4.All right, now our adapter is good, and it could output correct voltage. In this circumstance, unplug the power adapter from the laptop, and remove the battery, then holding press the power button to wait for about 1 minute, after that, plugged into the adapter and attempt starting on the laptop again.

5. Now, your test result is: the laptop still cannot start. Suppose the AC adapter was bad, if you decide to replace it with a generic one, you would have to follow the next rule:

the voltage output of your new adapter should be exactly same as previous one’s.

Hp Pavilion DV6000 AC Adapter 90W 19V 4.74A Bullet shape tip

Such as 19V hp AC Adapter, you’d better only use it of 19V, and the amperage of your new adapter also should be the same or even a little higher, such as 4.74A, you should use 4.74 -4.9A.

If the measure above is useless, and the laptop is still at dead state, then probably motherboard gets something wrong, or DC power Jack has a problem. Actually the latter one stands a good chance, so the motherboard cannot get any power from the AC adapter. In this case, you’d have to disassemble the laptop and replace the DC power Jack. Please take a look at this article: Tips of Laptop DC Jack Repair

The way to Clean Your Laptop Safely

You may already know this, but the average laptop keyboard is around 5 times dirtier than a toilet seat. Everything that gets on your hands gets onto your keys and down in between the cracks.

Dust, pet fur, hair, crumbs, and other random things will get inside your computer clogging the fans, causing overheating, and damaging ports. Cleaning your laptop out regularly will help keep it running smoothly.take “hp pavilion dv6000” for example :

1、Clean the Surfaces.

You can clean the case, screen, and tops of the keys by rubbing it softly with a microfiber cloth.

To sanitize it as well, put a small amount of rubbing alcohol on the cloth and wipe the computer’s surfaces.

Don’t use harsh cleaning chemicals on your laptop, which could damage it.

2、Clean the Keyboard.

Clean in between the keys and in any cracks with cotton swabs dipped in the rubbing alcohol. To get dust, crumbs, etc. out of the keyboard, use compressed air (which comes in a can and is inexpensive).

Dell Inspiron 6000 Keyboard

If you spill something into the keyboard, or something is stuck under the keys, you can remove the keys for a deeper clean, and clean the exposed area with the cloth and alcohol.

3、Clean the Vents.

Ports and vents in your dv6000 laptop often become horribly clogged with dust. Cleaning it out before everything gets completely blocked can help prevent damage from overheating.

Use the compressed air again here, blowing it into the vents and ports of your laptop.

When you’re blowing air on the vents exposing the fan, the air pressure can cause it to spin, which can damage or even break the fan. to prevent this, you can use a toothpick or paperclip, sticking in the vent in between the fan blades to prevent it from spinning.

Tips of Opening a Laptop Battery & Replace the Lithium Ion

Laptop batteries, like all rechargeable battery packs, lose their charging capacity over time. Because new Laptop batteries are expensive, replacing the individual cells inside the battery casing can save a lot of money. However, rebuilding a battery sometimes does not work as expected, so it’s important to be willing to purchase a new laptop battery if the procedure fails.

HP Pavilion DV1100 Battery 12 cells

1、Allow the laptop battery to run down completely. Turn off your laptop, then remove the battery. Write down the model number located on your battery to help identify the type of Li-ion replacement cells you need to purchase.

2、Split open a small section of the laptop battery pack (at the seam) with a screwdriver or craft knife. Continue to pry the plastic case loose moving around the outer edge until the entire top is free. This may take a bit of force.

3、Note the number of cells inside the case (usually four to eight). Write down the part number and voltage information printed on the cell casings. Draw a diagram showing the arrangement of the cells and how they are connected, or take a few photos to help with reassembly.

4、Purchase the correct number and type replacement batteries from online shop such as  udtek.com, based on your battery model and cell specifications. Six Li-ion cells typically cost around $30 to $40.

5、Carefully remove each cell using a craft knife and wire cutters as necessary. Each battery pack is different, but the cells are usually wrapped in a plastic casing with metal contacts attached to one end. Lay the metal contacts, wires and casing material aside.

6、Use double-sided tape or a solder gun (only if necessary) to attach the metal contacts to the cells and circuit board. When finished, the old cells should be completely stripped (naked) and the new cells should look like the old ones as much as possible.

7、Place the new cells inside the case, referring to your diagram or photos if necessary. Glue the battery(Compaq  DV6000 Battery) pack top back on. Charge the new battery for at least 24 hours before using it.

Tips & Warnings

Keep an eye on the new battery while it charges for the first time. If the contacts are not connected properly, the battery could overheat and cause damage to the laptop.