Is there any need to keep a Laptop hard drive in with sendning it in for a DC jack repair?

[pstokely]

I'm taking it to a local shop for loose DC jack repair, guy says he needs to the HD for more though testing unless to see if it will charge unless it can be done though the bios instead of Windows. It has Phoenix bios. I'd rather leave it out due to security concerns. Is there any other way to test it without the HD.

[canetoad]

1. Can you get it to boot

To a flash drive with Mint Linux? Other than that I can't see how they could test audio without loading drivers etc.

[pstokely]

2. It will boot of the battery into XP, the problem is the loose DC jack

and it has a naturally short battery life

[canetoad]

3. Yeah, but to boot into XP

You must have the hard drive in the computer.

If you want him to repair the jack without testing it, sure, it's possible but that's a burden you are placing on the repair person. How can he/she know they have fixed the problem if they can't test?

Maybe I'm not reading your original request correctly. Your laptop needs only repairs to a broken audio jack, you don't wish to leave the hard drive in the computer for whatever reason.

If you wish to remove the drive and have the jack fixed and properly tested, the computer will need access to some sort of operating system and be capable of booting by usb. (unless you happen to have a spare drive with an OS lying around).Your laptop may or may not boot from a simple Linux installation on a USB drive. Either way, for the repair person to do their job properly, they need to boot the computer to some kind of OS to test the sound.

[pstokely]

4. I talking about the power jack, not the audio jack

The audio runs off an external sound blaster

[canetoad]

5. Thnx for clarification

Sorry I wandered down wrong path.

I don't believe there is a way to check if battery is charging without software monitor. No bios I'm aware of has capability of monitoring charge.

[pstokely]

6. I can't expect the tech not to snoop around the HD

nt

[hobbit709]

7. He doesn't need the drive.

Not to fix a power jack. And any decent repair place would have a spare drive to use as a boot drive. I have and old notebook IDE drive and an old SATA drive with a version of Ubuntu on them that I can put in pretty much any notebook to see if it boots.
The power problem is easy enough to see if it's fixed. You plug in AC power without the battery, If it comes on the jack is fixed.