Won't run at all

[RonJohn]

My son has an older HP laptop (Vista Premium) that he uses to play low demanding older video games and some light browsing. Last week he told me that not only would the laptop not run on battery power (the battery is about 1.5 years old), but now it won't even run when it is plugged into the charger. Can it truly be totally dead? Is there something I could try to revive it? Thanks in advance for any help.

[dneilson]

Will it run if he removes the battery and just uses the charger? Have you checked the voltage at the charger plug? Maybe the charger has died.

[RonJohn]

The charger he uses isn't the original equipment. His cat chewed through that cord. But, the charger does work because I used it with my laptop and it worked just fine. Supposedly, before the laptop wouldn't start at all, it would recognize when it was plugged in, but the battery wouldn't charge. And now it won't even start being plugged in.

[dneilson]

Again---have you tried running with the battery removed?

[RonJohn]

No, but I will when he gets it to me and I can remove it.

[jdc2000]

Some laptops will not run on the AC adapter / charger alone. They must have a good battery installed. If you can't get this one to run on the charger with the battery removed, yours might be one of those.

[RonJohn]

I think this may be one of those models. If I remove the battery, I get nothing. With the battery installed, with or without the power cord, I get the message, "Warning. Battery Critical Low._" accompanied by four clicks. The power cord, as I stated before, is not the original. It is a Rockfish RF-AC9023 with various adapters and I was surprised to see that the adapter didn't push all the way in, although my son tells me that it has always worked that way.