Latitude E6400 Lost Power, Immediately Turned Off

Hello everyone.

One of the people I work with has a Latitude E6400 on a docking station. Our building lost power for a few minutes, and when it did, his laptop immediately turned off. I would think it would have just ran off of battery, but it didn't. From what I understand the battery works fine off the docking station. Is this the normal behavior with docking stations with this model?

 

It should keep running. My E6400 and E6410 have survived numerous power interruptions when docked. I have a small UPS, but that only runs the monitor.

John

 

Thanks. I find that strange too. Can you think of any reason why that may have happened?

 

The most likely cause is that it's not switching over to battery quickly enough. Try disconnecting the power both docked and undocked to attempt to replicate the problem.

The hardware configuration and whether it is under load at the time might affect the switching ability. I have the relatively undemanding Intel graphics so system load + dock power would be within the notebook's nominal power rating.

John

 

Thanks, I went to his office and tried to replicate the problem, and I was unable to. I pulled the plug from the docking station and it remained on and switched to battery as expected. I'm not sure what happened, but I guess whatever it is, it's not an issue now.

 

The only thing I can think of is he may have been previously using the laptop on the battery and it had not charged up enough to run the laptop when the main AC power croaked. I always like to use a back up UPS, even on a laptop for this reason. Keeps the external monitor from going off too.