It is a particularly unpleasant situation that no user wants to experience. Depending on the model, repairing a laptop with a short circuit can become a real nightmare, but with the right process and the right tools, that task stops being impossible. Today we visit the channel of Necroware, who usually specializes in retro hardware. However, his Lenovo ThinkPad T450S decided to throw in the towel, and that gives us the chance to watch its repair up close…
We press the power button, and nothing happens. We connect the charger, and we notice that it "deactivates" itself, to such an extent that we must remove its power source for it to recover. In other words, the charger enters protection mode because the laptop has a short... somewhere. I will not deny it: It is a nasty failure from any angle, and it can put many users in trouble.
The bad news is that surgery is probably necessary. The good news is that thanks to the wide availability of tools like adjustable power supplies and thermal cameras, these repairs have become democratized. With that in mind, we return to Necroware's channel, who we already know from his work on retro hardware, and his suggestions for reducing fan noise. This time he has a Lenovo ThinkPad T450S on the table, and it requires a bit of attention…
Repairing a Short-Circuited Lenovo ThinkPad T450S
Disassembling the computer is not necessarily complicated (the service manual for that Lenovo is very easy to find), but it also doesn't get done in five minutes. The motherboard is protected with plastic (the laptop's casing is metal), which makes the exploration process to locate the short more difficult. Now, it is not uncommon to find more than one, because the real short temporarily affects other components.
The "trick" that Necroware uses is very well documented, and it is voltage injection. In relaxed terms, you connect the positive to one of the points where the short appears, and the negative to any ground point on the motherboard. By "injecting" voltage, the affected part starts to generate heat, and with the help of our touch, some isopropyl alcohol, or a thermal camera, we can identify it. Necroware received a camera from the company Topdon, and although it is not the best model available, its function is adequate for this case.
In the end, the culprit was a small capacitor. It is incredible that such a tiny component can take down an entire computer, but the satisfaction of locating and replacing it is enormous.
(Editor's note: Obviously, this type of short is one of the simplest to repair. If the short affects the chipset or the processor, it is most likely that a complete motherboard replacement will be necessary...)
