Something in our home is destroying our laptop’s power supplies. Needless to say this problem is both inconvenient and expensive for us. Can someone help us narrow down the cause and suggest the solution?
My partner’s laptop is normally plugged into a power bar in our work room, where she’s been using it happily for years. Yesterday, when she was using the laptop, it suddenly cut to battery power. A glance at the laptop’s power supply showed that its LED was out.
Our first thought was to try plugging the laptop into a different outlet on the power bar, and then plugging the power bar into a different outlet in our home, but these didn’t help. We also checked our apartment’s fusebox; the fuse for the outlets we were using hadn’t tripped.
My next thought was that the fuse in the laptop power supply’s plug had blown, so we replaced that with a fresh one, but that didn’t have any effect. (The power bar itself doesn’t seem to have any fuse, so we couldn’t replace that.) So we concluded that the laptop’s power supply had spontaneously died, and we went online to order an urgent replacement.
Meanwhile, we thought we could use a spare laptop we have kicking around. So we retrieved it and its power supply, and plugged it into the same power bar in the same room. This laptop worked fine for an hour or two, and then its power supply also suddenly failed! Same problem: the power supply LED went out and it stopped supplying power to the laptop.
This time we tried unplugging the power supply from the power bar and plugging it directly into a different power bar in a different room. As soon as we did this, sparks flew, there was the smell of an electrical fire, and the fuse for the whole room tripped.
So at this point I’m guessing that either the power bar or the electrical sockets in the work room are somehow destroying electrical devices. Which is the most likely culprit, and is there any easy way of testing this without risking the destruction of more of our equipment? Do we need to call an electrician to check our outlets?
Unless something dire has happened to the AC coming into the house from the street, which should be evident from other appliance misbehavior, it’s unlikely the AC is at fault. Laptop power supplies (in my experience) tend to die like flies. You can get a cheap AC line tester from the hardware store and verify that the power is correct. All you have right now is that one laptop died which is typical and then (this is the only unusual part) that at the old unit hauled out of storage then died too.
Re the “sparks” plugging a shorted PS that tripped the power bar back into a non-tripped live outlet might well cause a fresh short. This is hardly surprising.
I don’t think I’d bet the rent it’s the AC at this point.
Just out of curiosity how did you do this without having to completely destroy the laptop PS casing? The vast majority of notebook power supplies these days are plastic boxes that are ultrasonically welded shut.
Here’s something that has happened to my laptop supply a few times:
After having not used it for a few hours (ie home just home from work or on waking up), I’ll find the laptop off and the battery dead. Checking the power supply with a meter, there was no output voltage. The first time it happened, I assumed that the cable between the supply and the barrel connector got pinched or something and I actually cut it off at the supply to check continuity. I was puzzled to find that the continuity was intact on both leads and, checking again, even more surprised that the output voltage had been restored!
I still haven’t figured how it is triggered or why but the supply apparently goes into shutdown and needs to be removed from AC power for a few minutes to reset. Of course, this would have been nice to know BEFORE I’d snipped the cable but nothing some solder and shrink tube couldn’t fix. This has happened maybe three or four times since the first and, while annoying, the fix is easy.
So to the OP, unplug it from the wall and check it again in ten minutes or so.
It may just fire up again, mine did.
My wife’s 3-year old Toshiba laptop goes through at least 2 power supplies a year. I buy inexpensive replacements on Ebay. My Lenovo laptop, which is plugged into the same power bar as her’s when it’s not plugged into a docking station, goes through a power supply about once every 2 years.
I don’t get the sparking and smoking that you are reporting, they just die quiet deaths with little fanfare. I assumed crappy power supplies were just a fact of modern life. #first_world_problem
Do you have a laser printer plugged into the same power strip or on the same circuit? When a laser printer powers up (or wakes from sleep), it can draw ten amps of power. That surge might affect other things on the same circuit.
We tested it several times today, over ten minutes apart, and it remained dead. But lo and behold, we tried plugging it in one last time just now, and it’s miraculously resurrected itself.
After the explosion that happened with the other laptop’s power supply, I’m not going to try plugging that one in again.
Something strange is definitely going on here. I’m leaning towards calling the property owners first thing Monday morning and asking that they send someone to investigate the electrical connections in our apartment.
Nothing else was plugged into the power strip, and the only other thing plugged into the same circuit is the desktop computer and its accessories (monitor, router, and speakers). The desktop and laptop are usually on at the same time and we’ve never had any problems running them that way.
you could have some bad receptacles(sockets) in the power bars. some power bars can be really crappy and wear out much faster than wall receptacles(sockets).
if it is fitting the plug loosely then you can have no power and sparks.
I may be talking through my hat here, but the power transformer (wall wart) for my tablet dies on the odd occasion. The cure is to put it in the freezer for 20 minutes or so.
So you’re using an inverter of some kind presumably?
Am I correct in thinking that most continental European countries use much lower voltage than UK mains? something in the region of 100-130v as opposed to 230-240v.
I believe Europe uses voltages similar to the UK; in the 220-230V range. And no inverter should be necessary. Every notebook power supply I’ve ever seen is labeled as being auto-sensing and capable of handling 110-230V power.
The only difference might be that the OP may be using an adaptor to convert UK plugs to whatever his new country uses. There is still no EU standard for power sockets. Whether that could affect the PS - I have no idea.
I’ve used Lenovo computers constantly since about 2004, T- and more recently W5xx series, and never had a power brick fail, including the ones from earlier models that I’ve used on later models. I generally keep three bricks: one at the office, one at home, and one in my backpack. The first two are always plugged into the wall. Zero failures.
I’ve had zero failures of laptop power bricks on my wife’s computers as well, and nobody at work talks about power brick failures as a common thing. (It is common for them to complain about battery capacity loss, especially after two years.)
I’ve had a couple wall warts fail over the years, but only a small fraction of all the damn wall-warts I’ve used over the years. And the most recent was a cable failure (which shorted and killed the wall-wart) but that’s not the power supply’s fault. I’d have a hard time counting all the power supplies I use all the time, with very few failures, so their reliability isn’t a big issue, in my experience. I even save old ones and reuse them when compatible, to replace lost ones. I’m sure I’ve lost more than have had them fail.