How (why) did this work?

[left-of-center2012]

I had been busy for a few hours, doing laundry, etc. Then about 30 minutes ago I grabbed my laptop but when I pushed the power button nothing happened.
I can run it either on a battery source, or with the power (electricity) cord. I tried each, but I had no power and couldn't turn on my laptop.

There is a tiny light on the side of the laptop. If it is fully charged, the light is white. If I’ve been using it on the battery, as the power drains, the light is yellow.
I looked at the light and it had no color.

Long story short (too late), I used Google on my smart phone and found the solution.

1. Remove the battery
2. Disconnect the power cord
3. Hold down the power button for 15 seconds.
4. Reinstall the battery, and connect the power cord
5. Push down the power button, to turn on the laptop

Now it’s working fine.
I don't know why or how removing all power sources makes the power work again.

I thought my laptop had died, and it was either pay to fix it or replace it.

[PoliticAverse]

1. It was futzed. You had to unfutz it. n/t

[lastlib]

17. (...having a bad-chip day.............)

[canetoad]

2. A guess

The laptop may have been stuck in hibernation or stand-by. This did a reset.

[left-of-center2012]

8. "may have been stuck in hibernation or stand-by"

Possible.
But that little light on the side being off?

[Egnever]

9. It ran out of power in hibernation or just got stuck in hibernation

Not unusual at all.

Removing the battery with no power connected to it allowed it to do a clean restart.

If you want to avoid it happening in the future just disable hibernation.

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-enable-or-disable-hibernate-in-windows-10/

[left-of-center2012]

10. "It ran out of power in hibernation"

No, the moment I did the procedure the laptop showed 100% power.

[Egnever]

14. Or got stuck in hibernation

again not unusual at all. Windows has a history of finicky hibernation. you might check the manufacturers website to see if there is a update for the bios that addresses that.

You are certainly welcome to believe what you like but that is what more than likely happened.

By removing all power sources and pushing the power button you discharge all the power in the laptop which clears the memory and forces a fresh boot up.

[BigmanPigman]

3. I think that is what I had to do with my

router or modem too.

[shraby]

4. I had to do that with my husbands desktop one time, only with no battery

to mess with, but disconnect hold down the power button, reconnect and turn it on. Doesn't sound like it would do anything, but it does.

[bagelsforbreakfast]

5. Have had similar experiences... but who knows why taking the battery out and

then putting it back in undoes the "Futz"?

[earthshine]

11. There are reasons.

The batteries have programmed chips. That programming could have crashed. Breaking the circuit resets those chips.

More likely is that there was just enough juice in the battery to keep the laptop from totally resetting.

On a desktop, one may have to kill the power to do a total (cold) restart. The battery on a laptop or phone makes that step a bit more difficult.

[bagelsforbreakfast]

12. "The batteries have programmed chips. " Thanks - would not have guessed at

that!

[brewens]

6. I had one of my work laptops do something similar. I had accidentally let it unplug behind and not

noticed until it died. Plugging it back in and starting it did not work. I just changed out the laptop and plugged it in to charge when i got the chance and it seemed to work normally. I thought it should work fine when I just plugged it back in in the first place. I guess it needed to get just a little head start charging before it could run?

[left-of-center2012]

7. It did not need 'charging'

As soon as I did the procedure,
it turned on,
and showed 100% charge.

[emulatorloo]

13. Call the manufacturer and ask them

They are better equipped to answer yr questions

[billh58]

15. From the HP site:

A power reset (or hard restart) clears all information from the computer's memory without erasing any personal data. Performing a power reset might fix conditions such as Windows not responding, a blank display, software freezing, keyboard stops responding, or other external devices locking up.

https://support.hp.com/ph-en/document/c01684768#c01684768_removablebatt

And then it goes on to outline the exact same steps that you used.

[left-of-center2012]

16. Excellent. Thank you

Especially since my laptop is a HP.

[lastlib]

18. Is its name "HAL", by any chance??...?

Did you check the AE-35 unit for possible failure? You might need to do an EVA to replace it......watch out for those black rectangular boxes, though..........

[Thor_MN]

19. To do intelligent charging, the computer has to know what "Zero volts" is.

The circuit can get confused and think the fully charged battery is "zero volts" and refuse to start.

The procedure you did was to remove (almost) all power and tell the computer, hey >THIS< is zero volts. Once reset, it's back to normal, until the reference point drifts again. Lots of laptops are discarded because "It won't charge" are actually in this situation.