It might be useful . . .

[Blaze]

We want to clear out some furniture we've acquired over the years. I've tried putting a sofa on Le Bon Coin and 2 groups on Fartbook - free to good home - but no takers. It's in good nick, extremely comfortable, good springs and cushions but it's "cottage style" so not à la mode today. It's a shame because I couldn't possible take it to the tip. I could try Emmaus but they may say it's too old fashioned

Well ...... further to my posting above, I've had a taker for the sofa ! A delightful couple of wine producers in Alsace, though they live here in Brittany. The business in Alsace is a family one which they've had since the 17th century (obviously the vines have changed over the years !!). They brought us a bottle of their bio wine which we're looking forward to trying.

[Hotrodder]

I've just tripped over three strimmers in the woodshed, none of them work, but apparently they can be cannibalized/cannibalised to make one that does work - I'm not holding my breath for that to happen though.

Oh and my computer, OH's computer and my laptop are all windows 7 - may they live long and prosper.

OH's Windows 7 laptop has just stopped working. No power. Battery gave up years ago so it has always been used with the mains power supply. I have ordered a new power supply and a new battery just for luck. I opened it up to have a look see and vacuumed out a bit of dog hair and dust, reseated the hard drive and the memory sticks. No improvement. If the new power components don't do the trick it will be scrap. I have already started looking for a secondhand W7 laptop but even expensive ones all look beat to sh*t when you enlarge the photos. You would think people would run a duster over something before taking the photo, but no. Too much work maybe.
A "vintage" Sony hifi amplifier caught my eye last week. Advertised at £200 but when I enlarged the photos it looked like it had been pulled out of a skip, covered in dust, scratches, and the casing was actually rusty!

[niemeyjt]

I use a high powered blower (outdoors) to shift the dust - it is amazing how far inside it gets over the years.

Also maybe if it starts and then freezes / crashes look at the thermal paste for the CPU fan - I had to renew that on my 10yo Dell last year and a fan.

[Hotrodder]

That is a good tip but not the case this time. Not freezing up but it just died and the charge indicator doesn't like up. If its not the battery and/or mains power supply then it will be some sort of control circuit that is beyond my skill set to identify.

[RobertArthur]

@ Hotrodder, after some hesitation I dare to ask: did you check the output voltage of the power supply, should be somewhere between 16 and 19 V DC?

[niemeyjt]

And also have a look at the connector in the PC - I have had the older, round yellow connectors break and fail on Lenovo laptops. In fact, I just threw (shock horror) the replacement part I got for my son's then did not use. If as a long shot it is an older Lenovo then the board with the connector is easily changed and certainly was available on ebay.

[RobertArthur]

To give another example, thx for the heads up by Niemeyjt. A rather long time ago I repaired many little transistor radios made by Philips. The volume knob, to be more precise the potmeter, including the on/off switch, was soldered on to the printed circuit board, corner top right. Such an arrangement produces of course mechanical stress, finally resulting in cracked copper tracks. Resoldering and a little piece of wire for additional strength brought these little wonders of transistorized engineering back to life.

Lessons learned? No, I've seen several Toshiba laptops in the past with the same stupid "on board" technique for their dc power sockets. Handle with care......

[Hotrodder]

I read 19.3 vdc on the output of the power block but that was just the meter reading which doesn't add any load. The new battery should arrive tomorrow (Monday) and if that's not a cure then I will try to get at the power socket on the side of the Asus laptop. I didn't check it out when I cleaned the inside because I couldn't separate the rest of the casing. No more screws visible so I assumed it is a snap together casing. Didn't want to break it by forcing apart from the wrong point. If its going to become scrap anyway I will go ahead and try to hack my way into it.

[RobertArthur]

Hotrodder, these modern power supplies don't behave as batteries, where due to the gradual build-up of internal resistances you finally get a considerable voltage drop and/or lack of power to start the engine of your car on a cold winter morning. As soon as I read such a normal "open voltage", I try to diagnose other possible problems downstream. Disassembling a laptop is indeed difficult, where eagles dare....You should however be able to identify several electrolytic capacitors (smoothing the dc currents inside). For the logic the voltages will be around 5 V, 3.3 V or even lower. If there is a "real" hard disk or cd drive it might be an idea to see if there is anything to be measured at their input connectors:
12 volts for the spindle and positioning motor, logic 5 volts.

[RobertArthur]

Hotrodder, a bit late, I should have made it my first remark: did you remove the old battery? The clever battery charger and voltage regulator circuit inside doesn't mind to see a lazy battery, okay, I can live with that....The problem is that such an exhausted battery starts behaving as a short circuit after some time. Alarm signal for your onboard voltage regulator: also with a perfect 19 volts supply input it will refuse to do anything useful at its output, it shuts down. Removing the battery - your laptop will loose some stability after this sudden weight loss - is enough to bring such a laptop back to life, if nothing happened.