On my old laptop which I still use for schoolwork, every once in a while the power supply (as in the little box halfway between the laptop and the outlet) randomly loses power. It starts working again when I go over to the outlet, unplug it, and plug it in again.
I know it's the power supply causing this because it has a light on it when it's plugged in, and when this happens it goes out. How an 8-year-old or so laptop is more reliable than its 2-or-3-year-old replacement power supply is beyond me. Now, this normally wouldn't be much of a problem (it's a laptop, so I could just go plug it in), but luckily this is an old enough laptop that the battery has become almost useless, causing it to shut down before it can be put back on life support.
Things I've tried so far:
- Switching outlets, of course.
- Installing the almost useless battery in case this was a problem with not getting enough power (this doesn't really make sense, but if there's one thing I've learned from past troubleshooting it's never to exclude nonsensical options)
- Checking the connections on all the plugs, of course. As far as I can see they're fine.
Any better ideas? This happens only every once in a while, but often if it happens once in a day it happens again. It's not common enough to make the laptop unusable (I typed this post on it, albeit in notepad so I could save it as I went
), but it's very annoying when it does happen (as you can guess, a laptop this old takes its time starting up).
I've now become paranoid and started randomly pressing Control and S no matter what I'm doing haha.
EDIT: This is pretty much irrelevant, but for the sake of completeness and humor at its age I'll give the specs of the computer.
Compaq Presario 900
576 MB RAM (512+128 MB, -64 due to shared graphics)
64 MB shared graphics memory, ATI IGP 320M
1.33 GHz CPU (I think I heard once this was the slowest Athlon XP ever made haha)
I know it's the power supply causing this because it has a light on it when it's plugged in, and when this happens it goes out. How an 8-year-old or so laptop is more reliable than its 2-or-3-year-old replacement power supply is beyond me. Now, this normally wouldn't be much of a problem (it's a laptop, so I could just go plug it in), but luckily this is an old enough laptop that the battery has become almost useless, causing it to shut down before it can be put back on life support.
Things I've tried so far:
- Switching outlets, of course.
- Installing the almost useless battery in case this was a problem with not getting enough power (this doesn't really make sense, but if there's one thing I've learned from past troubleshooting it's never to exclude nonsensical options)
- Checking the connections on all the plugs, of course. As far as I can see they're fine.
Any better ideas? This happens only every once in a while, but often if it happens once in a day it happens again. It's not common enough to make the laptop unusable (I typed this post on it, albeit in notepad so I could save it as I went
), but it's very annoying when it does happen (as you can guess, a laptop this old takes its time starting up).I've now become paranoid and started randomly pressing Control and S no matter what I'm doing haha.
EDIT: This is pretty much irrelevant, but for the sake of completeness and humor at its age I'll give the specs of the computer.
Compaq Presario 900
576 MB RAM (512+128 MB, -64 due to shared graphics)
64 MB shared graphics memory, ATI IGP 320M
1.33 GHz CPU (I think I heard once this was the slowest Athlon XP ever made haha)
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