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Toshiba Laptop suddenly "loses" wall power
I've searched around a bit but can't find anyone else with this exact
problem. From time to time, my Toshiba laptop (P35-S6292) spontaneously loses the power feed coming from the wall and switches over to battery power. The icon on the task bar changes from the little plug to the battery, the screen dims as I have configured the power options and the LED on the underside of the front of the machine is dark. It's as if the power supply isn't plugged in at all. If I shut the machine down in this state (Start -- Shut Down), the machine _almost_ shuts down completely. Windows shuts down, the hard drives stop spinning, the LCD turns off, the fans all shut off, but the little blue LED surrounding the power button stays on. It stays in this state until I remove the jack on the power supply from the back of the machine and then it's really off. If I then plug the power supply back into the port on the back of the laptop, the power LED on the front underside of the laptop lights back up again, and when I turn the laptop back on, it runs off wall power once again. Sometimes I don't experience it once in two weeks, and then on some days I'm shutting down and restarting three times in a night. That's _really_ annoying. Anyone experienced this besides me? I'm assuming that installing run-of-the-mill software packages will not cause this kind of problem. The last major platform change that was made to this machine was that it did have its BIOS upgraded when I last brought it in for servicing. The problem I was experiencing was screen-related. I decided not to have the screen replaced, but the service center did disassemble the machine, blow out the dust and upgrade my BIOS. I suspect the BIOS upgrade and I'm trying to determine if I can get my hands on the original BIOS to restore it. But I'm also open to anything else I should do to rectify the problem. Any help you can offer is appreciated, thanks! |
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Toshiba Laptop suddenly "loses" wall power
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Toshiba Laptop suddenly "loses" wall power
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Toshiba Laptop suddenly "loses" wall power
On Mar 11, 11:53 pm, kony wrote:
On 11 Mar 2007 16:30:24 -0700, wrote: I've searched around a bit but can't find anyone else with this exact problem. From time to time, my Toshiba laptop (P35-S6292) spontaneously loses the power feed coming from the wall and switches over to battery power. The icon on the task bar changes from the little plug to the battery, the screen dims as I have configured the power options and the LED on the underside of the front of the machine is dark. It's as if the power supply isn't plugged in at all. If I shut the machine down in this state (Start -- Shut Down), the machine _almost_ shuts down completely. Windows shuts down, the hard drives stop spinning, the LCD turns off, the fans all shut off, but the little blue LED surrounding the power button stays on. It stays in this state until I remove the jack on the power supply from the back of the machine and then it's really off. If I then plug the power supply back into the port on the back of the laptop, the power LED on the front underside of the laptop lights back up again, and when I turn the laptop back on, it runs off wall power once again. Sometimes I don't experience it once in two weeks, and then on some days I'm shutting down and restarting three times in a night. That's _really_ annoying. Anyone experienced this besides me? It could be the power supply itself- you could rig up some kind of multimeter to monitor it, but more often it's that the power jack on the laptop has come loose due to being a poor mechanical design. Unfortunately it's going to require replacing the whole mainboard which is quite expensive unless laptop is under warranty, unless you can find a repairshop to do it (which is quite possible), or do it yourself. If you are included to DIY, that would be the preferred path to take for cost effectiveness, if you have the spare time. I'm assuming that installing run-of-the-mill software packages will not cause this kind of problem. No they shouldn't. The last major platform change that was made to this machine was that it did have its BIOS upgraded when I last brought it in for servicing. The problem I was experiencing was screen-related. I decided not to have the screen replaced, but the service center did disassemble the machine, blow out the dust and upgrade my BIOS. I suspect the BIOS upgrade and I'm trying to determine if I can get my hands on the original BIOS to restore it. But I'm also open to anything else I should do to rectify the problem. Any help you can offer is appreciated, thanks! You might (very gently) wiggle the power plug while plugged in to see if that causes or resolves it. A bad power plug or plug pulling loose from the circuit board is a pretty common failure on laptops. These are all excellent suggestions. Instead of detailing this in my original note (trying not to make my original note too long), I have already performed some troubleshooting: (1) Used a multimeter to determine that the power coming from the power supply is within spec (2) Wiggled the following connection points of the power supply while connected to the multimeter: jack end, cord connection at the transformer, plug connection at the wall. (3) Wiggled the power jack while it was connected to the machine At no time was I able to get the power reading on the Multimeter to drop to zero nor was I able to make the laptop switch over to battery power "on demand". In addition, once the laptop had decided the wall power had disappeared, no amount of cord-wiggling, removal or reinsertion was able to get the laptop to kick back over to the wall power supply. If I were dealing with a short or a faulty connection anywhere along the line I would expect that, once the laptop had switched itself over to battery power, I would be able to get the laptop to switch back to wall power, even if only momentarily, by wiggling the wires and/or jack connections. A faulty connection should work both ways - it should fail and succeed by wiggling of the wires - but I have not once observed this to happen. Once it's on battery power it's running off batteries until its shut down, no matter what else I do. I recently blew the dust back out of my machine once again - perhaps something metallic had found its way onto the power traces - but I'm still leaning towards a BIOS issue with the version of the BIOS my machine is running now. Thanks for all your thoughts. |
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Toshiba Laptop suddenly "loses" wall power
Instead of detailing this in my original note (trying not to make my original note too long), I have already performed some troubleshooting: (1) Used a multimeter to determine that the power coming from the power supply is within spec (2) Wiggled the following connection points of the power supply while connected to the multimeter: jack end, cord connection at the transformer, plug connection at the wall. (3) Wiggled the power jack while it was connected to the machine At no time was I able to get the power reading on the Multimeter to drop to zero nor was I able to make the laptop switch over to battery power "on demand". In addition, once the laptop had decided the wall power had disappeared, no amount of cord-wiggling, removal or reinsertion was able to get the laptop to kick back over to the wall power supply. If I were dealing with a short or a faulty connection anywhere along the line I would expect that, once the laptop had switched itself over to battery power, I would be able to get the laptop to switch back to wall power, even if only momentarily, by wiggling the wires and/or jack connections. A faulty connection should work both ways - it should fail and succeed by wiggling of the wires - but I have not once observed this to happen. Once it's on battery power it's running off batteries until its shut down, no matter what else I do. I recently blew the dust back out of my machine once again - perhaps something metallic had found its way onto the power traces - but I'm still leaning towards a BIOS issue with the version of the BIOS my machine is running now. Thanks for all your thoughts.- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Have you explored the possibility that the PSU or Laptop are going into a protection mode? Many PSUs will shut down if they are becoming hot or detect a fault (which can be caused by a bad lead) and wont come back until the psu is allowed to stand for some time (few minutes). It may be that something else is hapenning that the Laptop doesnt like and is killing the connection, one I have seen is excessive ripple caused by power supply caps drying out/bursting causing spontaneous shoutdown in Lexbook systems and IBM POS Beetles. P |
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Toshiba Laptop suddenly "loses" wall power
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