I’m running Debian testing on a Laptop 13 Intel 11th gen (from March 2022).
This laptop is my daily workhorse and I was extremely happy with it.
I have a USB-3 expansion card on the left and the right side and both worked fine for loading. Yesterday it unexpectedly switched off due to zero battery while I was charging it on the left side. It seems the left side is not working any more since I noticed the LED on the left side remained off. After I noticed I switched the power plug to the right side. There I had some green/red blinking code. I tried to switch on but this did not worked. The power key was lighting for a short moment but switched of again … no matter how long I was pressing.
Over night I charged on the right side and when I plug in the charger now the LED is white (fully loaded).
Unfortunately the power key does not even show the white light when pressing (no matter how long I’m pressing).
I rotated the expansion cards but it seems its the left side itself. Each expansion card makes the LED on the right side lighting. When I plug any of my two USB-3 expansion cards on the left side the LED remains of when trying to charge. So it seems the expansion cards are OK but something is wrong inside. For the moment this is a secondary problem - my main problem is that I can’t switch on at all.
Try to turn on the computer without any expansion cards attached;
If that doesn’t work:
If you can get to BIOS, get to it and enable “Disconnect the battery”; If you cannot get into BIOS, open the device up and physically disconnect the battery; Disconnect the computer from power sources too.
Once that is done, click the power button 10-30 times. Reconnect the battery (or just plug computer into power source) and try to turn on again. This will drain all the residual power from the system, maybe it will work.
I unplugged all extension cards and tried to switch on.
I also tried to plug in the power cord into the USB C3 connectors at the end of the slots: On the right side I get white LED for both slots. On the left side nothing happens. I can’t switch on in any setup.
So I can’t go into BIOS since the screen remains shut off.
I opened the Laptop and disconnected the Battery. I clicked the power button at least 30 times kept the battery unattached and used the power source directly in one of the slots at the right side (=white LED) and tried to switch on. The power button LED does not light and the laptop does not start.
Just to clarify: when you clicked power button 30 times it was completely not connected to any power source? No battery and no power cable?
If yes, then only god knows what’s wrong. If you can get any error codes from battery LEDs, you could expand this post, but I think contacting support is the route for you.
This sounds like the mainboard EC might have disabled the left side ports to protect itself.
Also if the CMOS battery has failed this can cause a no start issue. Note that it is NOT a regular coin cell but a rechargable one.
Had a similar issue with my 11th gen machine that sat idle for almost a month, plugged it in and it reported charging but when I went to start it at a meeting an hour later, no response from the power switch.
It managed to resurrect itself by charging the CMOS battery if it is left plugged in for a long period of time as this is the only means that the battery gets charged.
If the CMOS battery has not been replaced it might be a good idea to do so. Contact support for the best guidance on your situation though in case it is something else that has failed on the mainboard.
The contact advised me to Fully Resetting the Mainboard State which I did. After re-inserting the RTC Coin Cell and re-attaching the battery only the right LED was blinking red. The left LED remained of. After re-assembling the laptop it does not start up. I reported this to the support.