Dell Laptop Power Jack Repair

[Paul S]

I have a Dell Inspiron 1150, about 3 years old. I recently started having random freeze-ups on it, along with some video distortion. It does this in both Linux and Windows. Only a hard shutdown will do anything.

I dismantled it, kind of hoping to find some bad capacitors. There is only one can type capacitor, and it looks OK.

As long as I have it apart, I am going to fix the power jack on it. The only problem is the replacement jacks available all look slightly different than the original. A section on the back, that connect the two pins, is missing.

The pics show the original, with a solder repair that I made, and the replacement.

Anyone know if this is an OK replacement?

(Sorry for the fuzzy pics, I still didn't buy a camera and used a webcam.)

[linuxguru]

Re: Dell Laptop Power Jack Repair

Just check the continuity across those two pins on the replacement jack. If it's shorted internally, you're OK. Otherwise just solder it in and bridge those two pins with a short length of thick wire/lead.

The freeze-ups are most probably due to dust in the HSF assembly. Remove the HSF, clean out the entire air-flow path, remove the white goop between the CPU and the HSF with isopropyl alcohol, and apply Arctic Silver III, V or Ceramique instead. It will drop your CPU temperature by about 3-5 degrees and help avoid the freezes.

[Paul S]

Re: Dell Laptop Power Jack Repair

I was expecting it to be pretty dirty, but it wasn't very bad. I opened it up and cleaned it out about a year ago.

I also was planning on doing exactly what you said about the HSF. I guess great minds think alike!

I haven't purchased the new jack yet. I wanted to see if I could find an exact match. I did find a supplier that says that this is a new and improved jack:

http://doctorlaptop-repair-jack.com/...products_id=42

Thanks for the reply,

Paul