Dell Inspiron 1735 Power Button Problems

[woodyhd]

A little back story here. This laptop has been having problems powering on for some time. The power button on the hinge looks like it may have been victim of excessive pressure. It never wants to power on at first try. You always have to press it multiple times to get it power on. Pressing the multi media button on the touch panel may or may not help it power on. Well now it will not power on at all no matter how much one tries. The battery is still good and it's always plugged in any ways.

So I tore it apart and pulled out the power button. I was sure that this was the problem, so I ripped the wires off and tried to manually start it by touching the wires. Maybe the button does something more complex than just a complete circuit because I can't get it to power on.

Is there any way to tell for sure that it is the power switch that's broken? I can order one on ebay, but I don't want to be buying parts when I'm not confident it's going to fix the problem.

 

[inerax]

wire the power button to a simple 9v battery and a light bulb. something like a x-mas bulb should work. I had to do something like this to test a button on a tower.

I don think the button does something more complex than just complete a circuit but could be wrong.

 

[inerax]

thinking about it you dont even need to wire the switch to test it... touching the wires should turn on this computer. i would trouble shoot further than the button.

 

[woodyhd]

I tried some more and I'm pretty confident I was getting good contact, but it would not power on by touching the wires. I'm not sure what else to troubleshoot.