Unexpected power down

This has happened twice now to my 6024W. I was using the laptop just to edit a web page so very very light use (the fan was on lowest) and it just died, as if the power had been totally cut off. I was running on AC power and had a fully charged battery in, so I've got no idea what caused it. Fortunately I wasn't doing anything crucial and had just saved - but it's a bit worrying. Any ideas?

 

I would start by evaluating your AC adapter and battery. Make sure you can run the notebook on battery power, and then wiggle the AC adapter cord around to see if the AC light flickers on and off (I had a problem with my old Dell's AC adapter shorting out because of a broken wire somewhere in the power cord). Beyond that, you may want to see what Zepto has to say about it.

 

Died and stay shut down or died and rebooted?

I've had a couple of spontaneous reboots during the past week or so and have yet to identify a cause. No BSOD, just the computer restarting. Because they were like a low-level reboot, there is nothing in the operating system log.

I wonder if we have another BIOS bug.

John

 

No, it just turned off and stayed off. Same kind of thing for me though, no BSOD or anything - it was just suddenly dead. As I say, it's exactly what you would expect if the power was cut. I've checked out the AC cable etc and didn't turn up anything unusual there. If it is a BIOS issue then it wasn't introduced in the latest BIOS, because the one time it happened before was before I updated my BIOS to the latest version.

 

It happened again today. The only thing I can think of is that I was running the laptop all day (though it is on a lot anyway) and it was in and out of sleep many times. But I just don't know. I'll contact support about it, but I suspect it'll be hard to diagnose what's going on here. It seems to just happen at random. Though saying that, every time it's happened i think the fan has been off (or as close to off as possible) so maybe that indicates something?

 

If it was after running the notebook for a long time, there is a possibility that the adapter is overheating. I had a problem with my Inspiron 5100's power adapter overheating after about 8 hours of use, but I normally couldn't power back on until I had cooled the adapter down (I just threw it in the freezer for about 10 minutes, generally.

 

Yes, I hadn't thought of that. The power adapter does get pretty hot. I should maybe run on battery every so often to give it a break.

 

There's no way that the 6024W should overload a 90W PSU, provided it is healthy. And, if the PSU has any sort of built-in cutout then the effect should be that of a power cut with the computer switching over to battery.

I wonder whether there's still a bug or two in the BIOS which can cause unexpected effects.

John