In article ,
says...
The power lead on my laptop has broken again - I replaced it less than a
year ago.
It's a Dell laptop and the leads are notoriously flimsy around the bit where
it plus into the laptop. The insulation has broken and the exposed wires
have been pinging off one by one this last month.

I asked hubby would a drop of solder and loads of tape not sort it and he
said he tried this last time but it didn't work.

My question is why does the solder not work? Is it conductivity of that
type of solder? Is there an easy solution?

Solder only really provides an electrical connection - there should be
something else providing mechanical strength to the joint. Presumably
only the very end of the cable is exposed where it enters the plug, and
this isn't enough area to make a good join. Also presumably Dell uses a
proprietary connector so you can't just buy a new one and solder it on.
To avoid the problem in future you could try applying a few layers of
heatshrink tube to the plug/cable end so that stress is spread over a
length of cable rather than all where it enters the plug.