The week I had to fix 12 laptops with the same weird power issue

Last month, a local school sent over a batch of Dell Latitude 3400s that would not turn on at all. Every single one had a dead CMOS battery, which was pulling the main system voltage down. I figured it out on the third one after checking the board with a multimeter. Replacing that little coin cell fixed all 12 machines in about two hours total. Has anyone else seen a whole batch fail from something that simple? I'm wondering if it was a bad shipment of batteries.

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ivan1657mo ago

Did you check the date codes on those batteries? A whole batch failing at once really points to a manufacturing defect, not just random wear and tear.

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fox.derek7mo ago

You sure it wasn't just a bad power supply batch causing a drain?

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thomas_palmer6mo ago

Actually read a forum post where someone had the same issue. Their power supply was fine, but the battery management firmware was killing cells. Could be a similar software bug causing the drain.

3