Today I had an urgent repair come in. A HP laptop. It was a nice-looking laptop, Zbook, an 8Th gen. The customer had been concerned as they used it daily.

I opened it up, tested the rails, and all were dead.

I checked the battery, 12 volts, a good sign. (The battery label had 11.8v marked, indicating a full charge).

I proceeded to remove the motherboard to continue the inspection of the power circuits on that side. Wha i found was not pretty.

What a mess! I thought this had completely fried itself! This looks lie a high current arc across the sruface of the trace that vapourised the mask. or did it?

However, once I had cleaned it with some ISO, and removed the blown cap. It all lit up and we got a display, and a windows boot.

We did it!

The laptop that died more