My laptop is a Clevo D900T. I know that it's receiving power and working because I can use the CD player (it can play CDs without booting the computer and obviously needs to access the motherboard etc. to do this) however when I press the power button to actually boot it, nothing at all happens, not even lights or fans. I have even tried pushing the contact underneath it manually. I figure the circuit board with the power button on it has somehow broken but I want to make sure before I spend money replacing it. Is there anything else that could cause this? Also is there any way to force it to power on without using the button?
Well on a desktop PC, you can turn it on by crossing the wires that lead to the power button. Or at least, that's how I saw it done on my ex-roommate's rather old desktop which he broke to the point where the front plastic cover came off. It was easy there; the wires kind of hung there where they used to lead into the power button. On your laptop, finding those wires, if it even has real wires, will probably be much harder (I wouldn't know, I've never looked inside one yet). But ... perhaps you can find some sort of leads? The basic idea is that the power button worked in my ex-roommate's desktop by shorting the circuit at that point. So if you can find a way to do the same on your laptop, that would be an appropriate test, I would think.
It's not that easy in a laptop. The power button is on a board that also includes 3 other buttons and 5 LEDs, which connects to the motherboard by a 15-pin ribbon cable. I can reach the pins from the back of the connector on the motherboard and I tried putting a stripped wire between them but there didn't seem to be any effect.
Here is what's written on my cable: E66085 AWM 20624 80C 60V VW-1 BANDO-S -F- This is the only cable I can find of matching dimensions and pins but I have no idea if it's compatible with whatever those markings mean.
