Asus X54H smoking, doesn't turn on anymore.
 

A little background for this laptop, my great-grandmother bought it when it released in 2011. It sat as a laptop that she would rarely use at all, and when she did it was used for email, news, normal great-grandmother stuff. She ALWAYS kept it plugged into the wall. There was not a single time that this was used for games until it was given to me, when she was moving out. I only played games on it that it would run good.

At first everything was going great. It is literally in pristine condition due to sitting in one spot for more than 10 years, and ran like a new laptop... from... 2011. I used it to write some documents, played some FFR on it, and I think I used an old version of Vegas Pro. I didn't use any version of software that was made after 2012.

A few days after using it, I turned it on to smell something like metal burning. I immediately unplugged the laptop and removed the battery, and started inspecting around it to make sure it wasn't on fire. Turns out that the smell was coming from the charging port. Thankfully, it wasn't on fire, just REALLY hot, only on the charging port.

Upon researching this, I couldn't find anybody with a similar issue, but saw many tutorials on how to clean/replace the DC port in the laptop itself. So I decided to just let it sit, and forgot about it.

Here comes 2024, and I remember the laptop. I plugged it in again (this time with gloves on and was ready to unplug it if needed), and it did nothing but show the charging light on the laptop. No smells, no display, nothing. Just the light. I let it sit for around 15 minutes, and nothing happened.

Anybody know what the issue may be? My guess is motherboard, or battery.

Re: Asus X54H smoking, doesn't turn on anymore.
 

Feel free to make suggestions on what I should try as well. I don't have anything to lose with this laptop lmfao.

Re: Asus X54H smoking, doesn't turn on anymore.
 

pull the hard drive out of it and use another computer to pull data off the hard drive
if you smelled that delicious blue smoke coming from the charging port, something got fried and laptops are never worth the trouble of troubleshooting. your laptop is almost certainly toast, and even if it does boot into os, I wouldn't risk it at all

Re: Asus X54H smoking, doesn't turn on anymore.
 

Unfortunately there is some merit to what Choof said above.

I would argue that the the status of the laptop wasn't in 'pristine condition' if it was sitting in one place being neglected for 10+ years. Battery is almost certainly dead at this point. If you've got an external battery, remove it and run it without it. If it's an internal battery, open it up, unscrew it, and unplug it from the motherboard. You're not going to be using a 10+ year old battery in any good condition here.

If it still doesn't power up after holding down the power button for 3 or more seconds while plugged in, WITHOUT any batteries connected, we write the system off as 'fucked'. It'd be cheaper and faster to get a refurbished laptop than to troubleshoot something that old.

If you really need data from the computer, you can pull the hard drive for the laptop by unscrewing the back of it, and then get a caddy or external cable for it, something like this: https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=SATA+to+US...f=nb_sb_noss_1

Just double-check connectors on the drive. Pretty sure with 2010/2011 model stuff you're still going to be working with hardware that's removable. Don't think they did eMMC technology yet for flash storage soldered to the motherboard.


Source: I fix computers and laptops for a living as a professional.

Re: Asus X54H smoking, doesn't turn on anymore.
 

Alright thanks. I'm not gonna plan on doing anything with it anytime soon anymore, as I'm planning on doing a XP build. Thanks much! I don't have to worry about it anymore.