[klewan]

I've got a 3 year old Acer laptop that is no longer working. No fans, lights, or anything else is working. Working wall wart and 19.5 volts into the motherboard at the power jack. I pulled the back cover and found a piece of chrome plated metal nested around the copper heat sink bar. Finally figured out it was some kind of vibration damper that had come loose. This thing was skating around all those solder joints on at least half the motherboard. So I'm pretty sure it shorted something out and that's why I have a dead laptop.

Is there any fuse or circuit breaker to protect the motherboard? I've looked, but I'm not sure what a motherboard fuse would look like. It's an ACER 7736z-4088, if that helps.

Any help or SWAG's appreciated.