UKC

I've just flown to Dubai with my laptop in my backpack. Worked when I left home, and now doesn't switch on. No charging light, no success plugged in, on battery, nada. I've tried removing the battery (entertaining in itself when the only tool available is a hotel corkscrew) and hard resetting it with the power button, but to no avail.

It did something similar a month or two ago, where powering produced a flicker of the on LED and absolutely nothing else* but that was solved by the aforementioned hard reset. This time it just plain doesn't do anything. No obvious signs of damage, and the bag hasn't been handled roughly - it's been with me the entire time.

Wondering if it might be the keyboard - the power button is a keyboard button, and the keyboard has been playing up lately. But I imagine I'd get a charging LED when plugged in, if that were the case.

Anyone any ideas or experience of their own?

you need to verify the charger works first, i’m assuming the battery is flat and can’t charge if the charger is broke. lack of Power led when plugging in is another indicator of charger. Take it to a repair shop to test a known good charger or buy one if not to expensive. A known good charger will either work or just the same. If just the same I’d then be looking at the charging socket on the motherboard. Some are soldered and some are on a fly lead and much easier to swap. you’d need to open it up and delve in with a multi meter to see if power coming past the socket (18v IRC) 

I’d get the power led up before worrying about the keyboard

Anything else though and you are looking at a component level board diagnostic and repair . Unless it’s very high end or a mac it’d prob be cheaper to by a working motherboard off ebay. 

Charger has power up to the jack end (which has an LED built in), and again was working without issue up until I left the house.  Reasonably certain that the battery was fully-charged and laptop hibernated before I left too.

It's frustrating that it's happened on one of the only jobs this year that I haven't taken any tools to. I'll have a proper prod around when I get home, but I'm not particularly optimistic about reviving it.

Sad times

I'd be concerned that my laptop hasn't been tampered with and is now stuffed full of exotic turtles or bags of hidden drugs.  

Might explain the ahem " fault" 

Your posts have got quite silly this week. 

I know.  Some call it humour.  

Sorry if I offend.  

I can't help myself 

I'd check your battery isn't fooked, not all laptops will work if the battery is knackered, or if it's not there at all. Obviously not easy to check with a hotel corkscrew.

I believe - but could be incorrect - that Asus laptops will boot without the battery installed. There haven't been any signs of serious battery deterioration - I was getting 6+ hours out of it recently - so I'd be surprised if it were suddenly borked, and if it had failed in a way that'd prevent a charge light appearing. I've only ever seen batteries fail slowly.

Sadly this sort of failure seems to be a feature with Asus laptops, judging by the number of threads on other fora. I'll have a proper look at it when I get home, but I've ordered a replacement anyway as I can't be without a laptop for business reasons.

Of course, the ordering of the replacement became a drama in itself. Apparently Amazon don't believe I can be in the UAE and order to my home address, so cancelled two attempts at ordering after payment had been taken and emailed to say they'd cancelled the third - but it's still showing as ordered ans arriving tomorrow in my orders. Four hours of talking to customer services didn't resolve anything, and so I think that's the final nail in the coffin of my Amazon usage. Absolutely useless.

I feel your pain, I just tried to log into my hotmail account only to have to reset my password and log into another email account which did the same, because the company computer I was using has their data centre in Germany so both these bastards thought I was a hacker from Germany. I had to wait till I got home and reset them both.

Security is great, but it shouldn’t stop you doing everything!!