Laptop Problem - Won't charge or power up

You shouldn't post the picture of the operating system's key on the bottom of your laptop (I'm describing it without exact keywords intentionally) as it can compromise your own use of it if it ends up being shared by too many people.

As to your problem, it is often a bad battery in these cases. But your description of having to jiggle the power cord seems to indicate a hardware failure either in the cord and adapter itself or the laptop itself where it plugs in. In any case it's almost certainly hardware which means you will almost certainly have to spend money to fix this.

If it's the adapter or battery you can fix it for under $100 (US Dollars) easily, but if it's not it may be more difficult to fix. You can test if it's the adapter by trying another one but if the problem is within the laptop itself you don't sound like you can fix it if it's not the adapter or battery so you should have a laptop repair technician have a look if you choose to fix it.

But depending on the age of the laptop you might just want to consider replacing it. Replacing a battery or an adapter alone is close to $100 and if it's much more than that you are approaching the price of the lowest end of brand new laptops.

If I were in your shoes, I would either buy a cheap used laptop for under $300 or buy a cheap new one for around $500 and not bother trying to fix the laptop.

It depends on where you had to wiggle it to get it to work and where it sparked.

"Sparking" tells me it was probably high voltage and you have a short in your cable going to the transformer. Is there an LED that lights on the power brick when you plug it in? If so does it come one? I can't tell which version of power cord plugs into the power brick. Is it the same kind as on a normal computer. If so, try replacing the power cord and see if that solves the problem.

If you know someone that has an electrical meter you could plug in the power brick and test to see if you have DC power at the end that plugs into the computer. Replacing the transformer is fairly easy but not always real cheap if you look for an OEM one for your computer.

Another thing to try is get an auto adapter that will work with your computer. Radio Shack in the US carries universal ones. You can probably find one at an electronics store in New Zealand. If the computer charges and works with the auto adapter then your power brick is bad in some way.

While it isn't a good idea to post pictures of the OS key, it isn't as bad as it used to be. OEM software is tied to that computer and manufacturer and others won't be able to use it unless they are using the same type of computer in which case they should already have it.

Robert Gentel:
Thanks for the advice on the photos, I just took them off incase. I can check around my friends to see if they have the same adapter or power pack as me. Do you really think it wouldn't be worth fixing if its a big problem? Should I still get a quote just to see?

Parados:
I can't see an LED sorry, there is a light at the front when plugged in would turn green, if that helps. I'll check out a few stores to see if they hold auto adapters, I can think of a few where they could be in stock. Also it's probably better that i took down the photos, just incase

Dartboy,

Whether or not it is worth it to fix depends on the laptop's worth and what it would cost. I can't quite tell from the pictures but it seems at least a few years old. I would not spend a lot fixing it unless it were worth a lot more than I'm spending to fix it.

Like I said, if I were in your shoes I would probably be looking toward getting a different laptop instead of fixing it.

Robert