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Asus X401A Laptop will not boot despite several replaced components

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  • Asus X401A Laptop will not boot despite several replaced components

    I have an Asus X401A laptop that my kids use for their schooling. Recently, one of the kids mishandled the laptop by picking it up by the corner of the screen and ended up cracking the LCD display. I bought a replacement through Newegg, and following some procedures on Youtube, I was able to very easily get the display back up and running. Computer booted normally and all was well.

    While I had the unit on my workbench, I decided I would also replace the keyboard, since a few of the keys were getting a little intermittent. I had purchased a replacement keyboard from Ebay about a year ago, but just never got around to replacing it. So, I figured this was a good time to do this. This was a replacement of JUST the keyboard, NOT the entire bezel with keyboard attached. It went without incident. Or so I thought.

    When powering up the unit, the power LED would light up and stay lit. The hard drive LED would light up for a few seconds and then go dark. No other lights or displays. Nothing on the screen at all. After several more failed attempts, I opened it up to inspect my work. I started to suspect that the metal screen just under the touch pad or the metal base of the keyboard had touched the motherboard and shorted something. Ordinarily the bottom of the keyboard is covered by a sheet of plastic film to prevent such things from happening, but I wasn't certain it was properly replaced. So, I figured I had just fried the motherboard.

    Found a local computer shop that had a replacement motherboard for that model, but with a slightly better processor. So I picked it up. Installed it. Still no luck. Same result as before.
    I swapped the hard drive with the original hard drive that I had replaced for a larger capacity drive last year. Still no good.

    I searched the internet and found several other things to try, such as powering it up with just the AC adapter without the battery, holding down the power button for 20-30 seconds, holding down the power button and F5, etc... Nothing works.

    Obviously, it wasn't a fried motherboard in the first place. Can't be the hard drive. Thought it might be the new keyboard, but even with that disconnected, it still won't boot. I don't even get the Asus start-up logo.

    Any thoughts?
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