W530 not powering on

[agath]

I have a W530 that I bought in 2011. It was working all fine when all of a sudden it went off last week. Now, every time I try to power it on, the green light on the power button comes up for a second and then goes off. I've already tried the following steps, but nothing seems to work

1. Removed all accessories, Battery, SSD's, RAM, CMOS battery
2. Tried the recovery steps (holding power button for 30secs)

Is there any other step I could try to resolve this issue?

Could this be a problem with the motherboard? If yes, is this part still available for sale? (any links for purchase?)

[agath]

any thoughts?

[heilong]

Could be the motherboard, RAM, CPU, maybe even a failed fan, who knows... I've had a similar problem once with my X220. Strangely enough, it started working when a different keyboard (an X230 keyboard, actually!) was connected. Even more strangely, it kept working when the original keyboard was returned to it! This was 6 years ago and this laptop is still working fine, never had this problem again.

You need to find someone with another working W530, willing to help you out with some experiments. Swap various parts until you isolate which part is the problem.
If you can't find a person like that in your town, you could try buying a cheap but functional W530 on eBay, and do the same process with it.
You are unlikely to be able to find a new (/ new old stock) replacement motherboard, perhaps you could find a used one, or buy a whole used W530 as a parts donor.

Good luck.

[heilong]

I have a W530 that I bought in 2011. It was working all fine when all of a sudden it went off last week. Now, every time I try to power it on, the green light on the power button comes up for a second and then goes off.

I wonder if you were able to fix your problem? My W530 exhibited exactly the same symptoms couple weeks ago. I opened the RAM cover and there was this very pungent smell coming from inside, suggesting some component(s) let out the magic smoke that makes them work. Today I found time to dig into this, and traced the problem to a faulty memory module. One of the capacitors on the module somehow shorted out, so basically the module was trying to draw a huge current from the motherboard. I bet the motherboard has some protection circuitry that detected this overcurrent condition, and automatically shut down. While you mention that you have removed your RAM and the problem persists, the exact same symptoms suggest that there might be a short circuit somewhere (perhaps on the motherboard itself). Inspect everything with a magnifying glass, looking for burnt or displaced components, damaged or bridged traces. Pay attention to the RAM, SSD, mPCIe connectors.

[bhendin]

Just to add I had a similar experience with my W530 after taking it apart to replace the thermal paste.
Would power on green light for a few seconds then power off. The culprit (after a few minutes of heavy sweating) was one of the RAM modules on the bottom was apparently not seated 100% properly. I discovered this only after removing them and booting fine, then reseating them again.

The fact that the system just "dies" like this instead of posting some proper BIOS error codes is quite annoying...