P246 not turning on after cleaning the fan

nekoddm

Hi. My P246 had this whirring sound around three months ago when it would still turn on. A few days ago the laptop finally shut down on its own, and I thought the problem was the fan. I watched a video on how to disassemble to laptop and followed it, and I was able to clean the fan by removing a huge clump of dust and dog fur. I reassembled everything as I watched and remembered, but now my laptop doesn't turn on at all. When I plug on the charger however, the indication light turns on, but the laptop still won't turn on even while charging. If it helps, there was something small, silver, and cylindrical that fell out from the inside of the laptop when I opened it to clean the fan. I have no idea what it is. Help is appreciated, I bought this laptop secondhand and I've had it for a little more than three years. Thanks, I hope you're all doing well.

Leostat

Is it possible to grab a picture of the thing which fell out? The worse case is it's something off the mainboard 

How far did you disassemble, just the back cover or unplug any cables? Reseating the ram is a quick check which can cause quite a few failed to boot problems, followed by any loose cables

If everything looks ok, try holding in the battery reset/disconnect for around 15 secs (usually a small pinhole on the back), then the lower button for the same amount of time. 

nekoddm

I had to unplug the cable directly on the back cover of the laptop and the cable of the fan. I didn' touch anything else...

I'll try reseating the ram as you suggested. Hopefully it'll work.

Here's everything that fell out. I'm assuming the other pieces are fragments of something, but the cylindrical one looks pretty important kinda

billsey

There are several different TravelMate P246 models, could you get us the full model number? The motherboards are very different between models. IIRC most of them have a switch that tells the system if it's got the cover off and that might not be depressed now. The middle bit in your image looks like it might be a plastic piece that pushes on something like a switch...

nekoddm

My model is the P246 TravelMate Series. I hope that's the full model name

Anyway I got my laptop to work! Reseated the RAM as Leostat suggested, and I also noticed that there was a blue film that wasn't inserted the same way as the others were. I inserted it into the slot properly and my laptop turned on after reassembly. It's been running for five minutes and it hasn't shut down yet and the whirring sound is gone.

Thanks for all your help! My laptop is good as new so far. Hope it stays like this!!

billsey

It should be TravelMate P246-M, P246-MG, P246M-M or P246M-MG. Good to hear it's working again!