Laptop won't charge

The charging pin in my Dell laptop has finally busted and the machine won't charge. I bought this through the Dell Scratch and Dent web site and the cost from Dell to fix it is almost as much as I paid for it. I'm not quite sure I want to invest that much more money into this machine but need to get the files off of the hard drive. My solution is to buy a Hard Drive enclosure for a laptop hard drive basically making that drive a USB storage device. Does this sound like a good solution and does anyone have another option I could try?

Thanks,

Which Dell do you have? I have an XPS 15 (L502X) that has had all kinds of charging issues. Most of the time was the charging brick and things of that nature but what eventually happened was whatever was holding the AC connection in my computer snapped so everytime I charged it I slowly pushed it back. I haven't fixed the issue but I've kept my laptop limping along.

Holding out til I can afford the new HP Chromebrook. I'msick of laptop chargers they're overpriced and ridiculous I will love charging via MicroUSB

The charging pin in my Dell laptop has finally busted and the machine won't charge.

Click to expand...

there was a guy on ebay that repaired them for I believe for 75 bucks, some of them you can get a docking station and plug that in and it will charge

or as you say just get a usb drive adapter and get you files that way

good luck

S_M

Also yes if you go with a new laptop getting an enclosure is probably the best.

Dells commonly have this problem. It's the power connector a lot of the time, but you should make every effort to isolate the power brick as the cause before scrapping it out as they are also a commonly defective product over time.

If the laptop actually has a broken power connector you can sometimes buy a new connector online for like $5 and replace it yourself. It's kind of a chore since you have to dismantle the laptop and carefully unsolder the old connector and solder a new one in it's place.

Sometimes the Power Connector is separate from the motherboard and connects to it via a 3-wire header. Those are the best because the soldering is eliminated. I'm not sure I've ever seen that on a Dell.

The other route, as has been mentioned, is to find a docking station if your laptop can use one, and if you can find one cheap enough.

But yes, your question about using a portable enclosure to access the drive is correct. That would work great to recover your files and then you can use the drive as portable media, or as a backup destination, or both.

If you provide the model number I can search for instructions on repairing it. A quick lookup for the part will tell if it's the easy to fix pigtail connector, or the much more difficult soldering style. It will also tell if your model will accept a docking station.

these folks do all kinds I had them do a HP for me they charge 59.99 and are quick

http://stores.ebay.com/L2-Laptop-Re...23470012&_sid=849036082&_trksid=p4634.c0.m322

all the best

S_M

I have to ask a painful question: "No backup?"

You don't need an enclosure. A docking station (NextStar) will do. This will not only solve the immediate problem but is very handy for things like archiving video/photos and .... backup.