My buddy Dave did that for years, every password tied to his old dog's name. Then someone got into his email and tried to break into his bank, and he spent a whole weekend changing every single account. Now he uses that password app and swears by it, though he still forgets the master one half the time. Have you thought about just letting a manager handle it for you?

Did you ever think to check the BIOS before throwing money at it? I had the exact same thing happen on an old HP where the battery showed as "not detected" and I was ready to buy a replacement too. Turns out a BIOS update from like two years back had a fix for battery communication that I never installed because who reads those notes, right? The part that kills me is that these updates sit there for years and nobody tells you, so you waste two weeks chasing wires and chargers for nothing. Now I check for firmware updates first before I touch any hardware. Lesson learned the hard way, and it sounds like you learned it too.