Do you know that it is possible to turn on your Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer laptop without a power button? This method is very handy when your laptop power button is not working. Although the method might be a little bit complex to you if you are not comfortable with disassembling your laptop.
Before I show you how you can use this method, let me first help you to fix your power button with some easier methods. But first, let's start with the common reasons why your HP, Lenovo, Acer or Dell laptop power button is not working.
Reasons why Laptop Power Button Is Not Working
These are the reasons:
1. Broken Power Button
Since your power button is the primary culprit on your HP, Lenovo, Acer or Dell laptop, there's a high possibility that your power button has developed some type of fault.
These are the faults you should expect:
Loose Cable
This means that the cable connected from your power button to your motherboard is disconnected. The cable can be disconnected from either the power button or your motherboard. Though this type of situation is rare, it's still a possibility.
Depending on where your power button is located on your laptop, you might be required to disassemble your laptop to get to your power button so that you can properly check for any loose cable.
Button Not sitting right
Another fault you should expect to know why your laptop power button is not working is because there's a possibility that your power button isn't sitting right.
You should understand that your laptop power button itself is a click button beneath another button. The button at the top is what you click on to then click the main power button below.
For example,
If you remove the letter G key from your keyboard, you won't be able to click on the G key anymore because the G key is not there anymore to help you interact with the clickable G key button embed on your keyboard.
With this understanding, you would have to remove and inspect the both buttons which are the clickable power button beneath and the power button key above to check if something is broken or not properly set.
2. Battery Low
Have you considered that the reason your laptop HP, Lenovo, Acer or Dell laptop isn't coming on is because you might have a dead battery?
Many people usually ignore this and automatically jump to the conclusion that their power button might be faulty not knowing that their battery is the culprit all along.
If you've used your laptop a day before you discovered that your power button is faulty, there's a chance that you didn't shut down properly or left your computer on.
This Kind of situation must have drained your battery completely and all you need to do is to charge your laptop for some time before you try to turn it on.
Plug in your charger to your laptop and then let your computer charge for more than 30 minutes and then you can turn on your laptop.
3. Temporary Error
This is a very common issue that most people really don't know about. This kind of error can be temporary and easy to fix.
You may have developed an error while you were working on your laptop and then you didn't resolve the error before shutting down your laptop which led to why your power button isn't working or responding.
Another way you may have developed this error is when you left your computer in hibernation or sleep mode for too long and then when you try to turn your laptop on, it wouldn't respond as it should.
4. Faulty RAM
Your laptop RAM plays a huge role to successfully boot up your computer. If your RAM is faulty or not sitting right, this could be the reason why your Dell, HP, Acer, Lenovo power button is not working.
Please understand that I'm not telling you that your RAM is bad, I'm only letting you know that faulty RAM can cause the problem you are facing.
Your RAM developing problem might have been as a result of you dropping your laptop or a problem that just occurred on it's own.
How to Fix Laptop Power Button Not Working
On your HP, Dell, Acer, Lenovo laptop, here's how to fix your power button:
1. Reset CMOS Battery
The idea here is to drain all the power from your laptop so that you can turn on your laptop without any errors.
Here's how,
1. Unplug your charger from your laptop.
2. Disconnect all peripherals like USB devices.
3. Remove or disconnect your laptop battery.
4. Open up your laptop to reveal your motherboard.
5. Take out your CMOS battery (it looks like a coin).
6. Press and hold your power button for up to 40 sec and then release your hand.
7. Reinsert your CMOS battery correctly.
8. Insert or reconnect your laptop battery.
9. Plug in your laptop charger and check your LED light to be sure it's charging.
10. Press your power button to turn on your laptop.
2. Check your RAM
Like I mentioned earlier, your RAM is very necessary for your laptop to power on successfully. If there are issues with any of your RAM or its slot, your computer won't turn on.
To fix this problem, you would have to inspect your RAM and its slot one after the other just to identify which RAM and slot is working.
For example,
You will have to test RAM 1 with slot 1 and 2 one after the other just to make sure RAM 1 is working properly with either slot 1 or 2.
The whole point of doing this is to separate the bad RAM or slot from the good RAM or slot.
3. Replace your Power Button
Honestly, you may have to face the truth one way or another. There's a possibility that your power button is damaged and needs to be replaced.
This isn't really much of a big deal because power buttons are very affordable and easy to replace in the hands of an expert.
Go to your nearest reliable computer repair shop to resolve your power button issue if you can't replace it yourself.
How to Turn on Your Laptop Without a power Button
1. Boot through BIOS recovery
This method won't work for all laptops but, there's no harm in trying.
Before you begin this method, please follow the instructions extremely carefully to avoid damaging your laptop.
Let's get to it:
1. Turn off your laptop.
2. Unplug everything connected to your laptop like charger and USB.
3. Plug your laptop charger to your power outlet without connecting it to your laptop.
4. Press and hold Ctrl + Esc on your laptop keyboard.
5. Plugin in your charger while holding down the keys.
6. Remove your hand from the keys the moment your screen comes on.
7. BE CAREFUL HERE. Click only on the option that says do nothing or restart your computer.
2. Manual method
If the method above did not work for you, you should consider this method. This method is guaranteed to work for you if done correctly.
Here's how:
1. Turn off your laptop completely.
2. Make sure your battery is charged and connected to your laptop.
3. Disassemble your computer to look for the port on your motherboard that connects directly to your power button. (on some laptops, you will find the port underneath the keyboard while on some other laptops you might have to completely disassemble your laptop.
4. Get a flat mouth screwdriver.
5. Look closely at the pins on your power button port on your motherboard.
6. Use the flat mouth screwdriver to touch the first two pins simultaneously. If it doesn't work, try the last two pins simultaneously.
7. Your laptop should turn on once you perform step 6 correctly.
3. Use an External Keyboard
The use of an external keyboard to turn your Dell, HP, Lenovo or Acer laptop is possible but not very common for most users.
There's a setting that is automatically turned off by default that needs to be turned on through Advanced Settings.
This setting should have been turned on in the past to avoid headaches when you are having troubles with your power button.
In the settings, you would have already assigned a specific key dedicated as a secondary power button on the external keyboard due to when you have issues with your primary button.
If you have already enabled these settings, you can use it right now.
Here's how,
1. Turn off your laptop.
2. Connect your external keyboard.
3. Click on the key you assigned as the secondary power button to turn your laptop on.
How to Turn off Your laptop When Power Button Is not working
There are several reasons why your power button wouldn't respond when you are trying to turn off your laptop but, the primary reason for this is when your laptop is frozen.
In this kind of situation, you are forced to make the hard decision to turn off your laptop. Please note the methods I'm about to show you now is not the right way of turning off your laptop. So this is something you should practice only when you don't have any option.
Let's get to it,
1. Take out your battery
This is by far the easiest way to turn off your laptop when your power button is not responding. All you have to do is to flip your laptop over and pop out the battery.
Your laptop will instantly go off because you've taken out the source of its power. You want to make sure you have completely disconnected your charger from your laptop before taking out the battery.
There are some laptops that can work with just the charger while the battery is ejected. So, before you remove your battery, make sure you take out the charger first.
If your laptop battery is internal, you might have to take the extra step of unscrewing the back cover of your laptop and then ejecting your battery power cord. You wouldn't have to take out your battery,, all you would need to do is to look for the power cord from your battery going to the motherboard and then eject it carefully.
2. Hold your power button for 40 sec
There are times when you think your power button is not working whereas in reality your power button is actually working but because your computer is frozen, it's taking longer to respond.
As long as you are sure your power button is working and has not developed any hardware faults, this solution should work for you.
Here's all you have to do:
Hold down your power button for 40 sec and your computer would go off. If your computer doesn't go off, hold down the power button much longer until it goes off.
FAQ
How do I turn on my laptop if the power button Doesn’t work?
There are several ways you can achieve this but the most effective way that has a higher chance of working for you is to open up your laptop and check for the port on your motherboard that connects a cable to your power button.
After that, you should disconnect the power button cables from your motherboard and get a flat mouth screwdriver and use it to touch the first two pins or the last two pins.
When I press the power button nothing happens?
The reason nothing happens when you press the power button is because of the following:
- Broken power button.
- Battery low.
- Temporary error.
- Faulty RAM.
How do you turn on a computer with a broken power button?
If your power button is broken, you should use an external keyboard to turn on your computer. You can only achieve this after you've assigned a key on an external keyboard as a secondary power button through Advanced settings.
This means that you would have done these settings in the past before you could successfully use an external keyboard to power on your computer.
