Laptop will not turn on

You pressed the power button and nothing happened, or a light flickered and it died again. Before you assume the worst, a laptop showing no sign of life is usually not the disaster it looks like, and the cause is far more often the charger, the port or the battery than the machine itself. Tell us exactly what it does when you press the button and we will find the real fault, say plainly whether it is worth repairing, and give you one fixed quote before anything is opened. If we cannot fix it, you pay nothing for the repair.

Send an enquiry Book a repair

No fix, no fee on the repairIf we cannot fix it, you do not pay for the repair. In writing, on every job.
Free advice by messageDescribe the fault and we will tell you what it sounds like and whether it is worth doing, before anyone travels.
We come to youAcross Leeds, West Yorkshire and North Yorkshire, or we collect and return.
A real person repliesNot a call centre, not a ticket queue: we read every enquiry, day and night, Sunday to Friday. The fixed quote you agree is the price you pay.

The short version

It is more often the charger or the port than the laptop.
Your files are almost never affected by a no-power fault.
Four free tests below rule out most of the cheap causes.
If it was dropped or got wet, stop and read that first.

Try this first

Four things to try before you call anyone

All free, all take a couple of minutes, and between them they rule out the causes we find most often. Do them in this order.

Try a different charger, ideally a known-working one of the right type. A failed charger is the single most common cause of a laptop that shows nothing at all. If a borrowed one wakes it, you have found the fault and it is a cheap one.
Leave it on charge for half an hour before pressing anything. A battery flattened past a certain point will not respond to the power button immediately. It needs a while on the charger before it will even try.
Unplug everything, hold the power button for thirty seconds, then plug the charger back in. This drains the residual charge and clears a stuck power state, which is a surprisingly common reason a laptop sits dead with no fault at all.
Press power in a quiet room and listen closely. A fan, a click, a beep or a faint whirr means power is reaching the board and this is a display fault rather than a no-power one. Silence points the other way. Either answer narrows it considerably.

What it usually means

Why a laptop shows no sign of life

No power is reaching it: a failed charger, a frayed cable, or a wall socket that is off, the cheapest thing to rule out first
A worn or cracked charging port, so even a good charger cannot get power into the machine
A battery that will no longer hold or pass power, so it will not start on its own
A stuck power state, where the board has latched off and clears once it is properly drained and reset
A blank screen on a laptop that is actually running, where the real fault is the display or the backlight, not the power
Less often, a fault on the mainboard itself, which we prove before we ever conclude it

Not sure which is yours? Describe it in a message and we will tell you, free. Tell us what it is doing and we will work it out.

At a glance

What the signs point to

What happens when you press the button tells you more than anything else. Find the row that matches yours.

When you press power	Usually means	Typically
Nothing at all, no light, no sound	Charger, charging port or a flat battery	One of the cheaper repairs, and often not a repair at all
A light comes on, then dies	Battery or power delivery failing under load	Usually worth doing
Fans and lights but a black screen	A display fault, not a power fault	See the black screen page, it is a different job
Beeps, or a light blinking in a pattern	The machine reporting a fault in code	Genuinely useful, it names the fault before we open anything
It was dropped or got wet first	Physical or liquid damage	Stop pressing power, more attempts can make it worse

If yours is the last row, do not keep trying. Liquid and power together are what turns a repairable board into a dead one.

What we do

How we find out what is really stopping it

You tell us in your message exactly what happens when you press the button, whether there is a light, a fan, a beep or nothing at all, so we arrive ready for the right fault
We come to you across Leeds, at home or at work, or we can collect the laptop and bring it back if that is easier
We settle the power question first: a known-good charger, the port, and whether any charge is actually reaching the board
We work out whether the machine is truly off or running blind, because a laptop that powers up to a black screen is a display fault, not a power one, and the two are fixed very differently
We drain and reset the power state properly, since a surprising number of dead-looking laptops come back to life at exactly this step
We test the battery and the power delivery on the board before the mainboard is ever named as the cause
You get a fixed quote before any work begins, and if it cannot be fixed, or it is not worth the money, we say so and you pay nothing beyond any call-out you agreed

Is it worth fixing?

Is a laptop that will not turn on worth repairing?

Nearly always worth a look before you write it off or buy a replacement. The causes we find most often, a charger, a port, a battery or a stuck power state, cost little next to a new machine, and a laptop that will not turn on is very often one of those rather than a genuine casualty. The honest exception is a failed mainboard on an older laptop, since the board is the most expensive part to put right, and at that point a replacement can be the wiser spend. If that is where yours has landed we will tell you plainly, and we can still get your files off the old machine so nothing is lost in the move.

This is a laptop repair job. Advice by message is free, then you get one fixed quote before any work starts. If we cannot fix it, there is nothing to pay for the repair.

Send an enquiry and describe the fault

Where we work

We come to you across Leeds, West Yorkshire and North Yorkshire

Home or work, day or night, Sunday to Friday. There is no walk-in shop, so we come to the machine, or collect it and bring it back. Start at computer repair in Leeds, or pick your area.

Questions

Laptop no-power questions we get asked

Why will my laptop not turn on?

There are only a handful of usual reasons, and most are not serious. The commonest are no power reaching the machine, a failed charger, a frayed cable or a worn charging port, then a battery that will no longer start it on its own, then a stuck power state that clears once the board is drained and reset. A truly dead mainboard does happen, but it is the least likely of the set, not the first thing to fear. We work through them in order of likelihood, so you are never paying to replace the wrong part.

Is it the battery or the screen?

Those are two different faults that look identical from the outside. If the laptop is completely silent, no light, no fan, no sound, the power side is the place to start, which usually means the charger, the port or the battery. If you can hear it running, a fan spinning or a light glowing, but the display stays black, then the laptop is turning on and the fault is the screen or its backlight, not the power at all. Telling us which of those you see when you press the button lets us point straight at the right part.

I press the power button, a light comes on, then it dies. What is that?

That flicker of life and then nothing is usually a power delivery problem rather than a dead machine: a battery that can no longer hold, a charger not supplying enough, or the board dropping into a protective shutdown. It is exactly the fault that a proper drain and reset, followed by a test of the battery and the power circuit, is meant to find. It is rarely the write-off it feels like in the moment.

Can you fix it today?

Sometimes, and we will be straight with you rather than promise a slot we cannot keep. A stuck power state, or a fault that a spare charger sorts, can often be dealt with on the visit. Anything that needs a specific part, a charging port or a battery for your exact model, depends on how quickly that part reaches us, which can take a few days. Tell us what it is doing when you get in touch and we will give you a realistic answer, not an optimistic one.

Will I lose my files if it will not turn on?

A laptop that will not power up almost always still has your files sitting safely on its drive; the power fault and your data are separate things. In most repairs your files are never at risk. Even in the worst case, a machine we cannot bring back, the drive can usually be read on our own equipment and your photos and documents recovered from it, so a dead laptop does not have to mean lost files.

Is it worth fixing or should I just buy a new one?

It depends on what the free advice by message finds and on the age of the laptop. If it is a charger, a port, a battery or a stuck power state, repair is almost always the cheaper and quicker choice. If it turns out to be the mainboard on an older machine, that is the point where a replacement can make more sense, and we will tell you so honestly rather than sell you a repair that is not worth it. Either way you decide with the real fault and a fixed quote in front of you.

Sound more like one of these?

Tell us what is wrong.

Send an enquiry and describe the fault. We will find the fault properly, give you a fixed quote before any work, and if we cannot fix it there is nothing to pay for the repair. A real person who does the work, not a call centre.