Notebook freezing when connected to external power supply
Mike De Petris
battery, but the instance i plug the charger in, it freezes. First i
thought it was a Vista-Toshiba issue but only to discover that even in
BIOS it freezes instantly when the charger is plugged in. When the
laptop is off, any attempt to power it on while the charger is plugged
in, results only in a flicker of the power led.
I tried different chargers, ANY possible power options combinations in
Vista and Win7.
If I boot from battery and enter Windows Safe Mode, or Hiren's boot
CD, or WinXP mini all works fine even if I connect the power cord,
where normal Windows and BIOS freeze istantly.
I'm even thing of giving current directly by the battery contacts...
may this be possible?
Any help or advice on possible causes or solution to this issue would
be grateful. Thank you :)
hr(bob) hofmann@att.net
What do you mean by freezing, there are devices sold that either heat
or cool, but those are normally sold as refrigerators and heaters. Do
you mean the mouse stops moving, or what????
Mike De Petris
wrote:
yes the computer stops working, hangs.
Bennett Price
Toshiba, does the PC hang? I'm thinking the socket in the Toshiba may
be shorting out in some fashion when a plug, dead or alive, is inserted.
Mike De Petris
> If the charger is not plugged into the wall when you insert it into your
> Toshiba, does the PC hang? I'm thinking the socket in the Toshiba may
> be shorting out in some fashion when a plug, dead or alive, is inserted.
no, I tried keeping the charged plugged into the notebook with mains
disconnected, and it works normally with battery, hang occurs as soon
as I connect the charger to the mains
Jeffrey D Angus
> no, I tried keeping the charged plugged into the notebook with mains
> disconnected, and it works normally with battery, hang occurs as soon
> as I connect the charger to the mains
Let me see if H ave this right.
With the charger plugged into the lap top, but NOT connected to
the mains, the laptop functions properly.
If you plug the power supply into the mains, the laptop goes
stupid and hangs up.
IF that's the case, I would suspect that something is wrong with
the charging supply. Such as the voltage is way high, causing the
laptop top get annoyed and hang up.
Have you measured the charger output with no load on it? (I.e.
not plugged into the laptop.)
--
“Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.”
Frank Leahy, Head coach, Notre Dame 1941-1954
Mike De Petris
> Mike De Petris wrote:
> > no, I tried keeping the charged plugged into the notebook with mains
> > disconnected, and it works normally with battery, hang occurs as soon
> > as I connect the charger to the mains
>
> Let me see if H ave this right.
>
> With the charger plugged into the lap top, but NOT connected to
> the mains, the laptop functions properly.
>
> If you plug the power supply into the mains, the laptop goes
> stupid and hangs up.
>
> IF that's the case, I would suspect that something is wrong with
> the charging supply. Such as the voltage is way high, causing the
> laptop top get annoyed and hang up.
>
> Have you measured the charger output with no load on it? (I.e.
> not plugged into the laptop.)
I measured the voltage and it's normal, tried several chargers anyway
Mike De Petris
> On Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:00:57 -0700 (PDT), Mike De Petris
> <mikedepet...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>
>
> installed. If that fixes it try reinstalling it. If you don't have the
> utility installed go to Toshiba and see if it is available for your
> 205 and the Vista platform.
I have plain Windows 7 installed at the moment, no Toshiba nor other
utilities, even never connected to the network.
Anyway it freezes even in the BIOS when connecting power.
Jamie
Its your power management drivers and GUI software that is a problem..
uninstall and install the original drivers from the CD's or web sight
for that laptop.
Since the unit seems to be locking, the driver software could be most
likely is the issue and maybe proprietary to that lap top
Things like this happen after a Windows update, unexpected error on
the HD, some one removed something they shouldn't of or, a
funny program is running on board..
It's possible a bad onboard support circuit but I doubt that
very much.
A simple test to prove this would be to boot to bias so the basics of
the machine is on and energize the charger to see if a lock takes
place there.
Next, boot into safe mode, and try the same thing.. If all is ok up
to this point. correct the software on board.
Have a good day.
P.S.
some Laptops have a partition on the HD that has special set up
software at boot time to configure the proprietary onboard chips..
This also could be an issue..
Jeffrey D Angus
> A simple test to prove this would be to boot to bias so the
> basics of the machine is on and energize the charger to see if
> a lock takes place there.
> Next, boot into safe mode, and try the same thing.. If all
> is ok up to this point. correct the software on board.
Good call, thanks Jamie.
Jeff
Mike De Petris
<jamie_ka1lpa_not_valid_after_ka1l...@charter.net> wrote:
> Its your power management drivers and GUI software that is a problem..
> uninstall and install the original drivers from the CD's or web sight
> for that laptop.
I'm testing it with a plain Windows 7 installed on a new hdd, never
connected network, never installed other drivers or software.
> Since the unit seems to be locking, the driver software could be most
> likely is the issue and maybe proprietary to that lap top
Even if it's plain Windows 7?
> Things like this happen after a Windows update, unexpected error on
> the HD, some one removed something they shouldn't of or, a
> funny program is running on board..
No windows update, no driver nor software installations done.
> It's possible a bad onboard support circuit but I doubt that
> very much.
Of course it's possible.
> A simple test to prove this would be to boot to bias so the basics of
> the machine is on and energize the charger to see if a lock takes
> place there.
As I wrote, if I boot using battery and enter BIOS, it freezes when I
connect power.
> Next, boot into safe mode, and try the same thing.. If all is ok up
> to this point. correct the software on board.
As I wrote, safe mode works ok even if connecting power.
> P.S.
> some Laptops have a partition on the HD that has special set up
> software at boot time to configure the proprietary onboard chips..
> This also could be an issue..
I installed a new hard disk, so do you think I should install Toshiba
utilities in Seven?
William Sommerwerck
and W7. Which suggests a software problem.
Toshiba notebooks have not generally have this problem. You could push and
pull the AC adapter's plug all day long, and the computer didn't mind.
I suspect the software interprets the tiny "glitch" when the plug is
inserted (or removed) as a power loss, or a command to switch to
Sleep/Standby.
hr(bob) hofmann@att.net
wrote:
Does the hard drive light come on solid when it freezes, indicating it
is in some sort of loop, or does it go out, or does it flash
intermittently indicating it is not locked up?
Mike De Petris
wrote:
it stays turned off, after lock up I see glowing these LED:
- power on
- power connected
- battery charging (if battery present)
Jeffrey D Angus
> On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 04:42:58 -0400, Jamie
> <jamie_ka1lpa_not_v...@charter.net>wrote:
>
>> some Laptops have a partition on the HD that has special set up
>> software at boot time to configure the proprietary onboard chips..
>> This also could be an issue..
>
Compaq, they were nortorious for having a special partition they would
fail to boot if they didn't find.
Jeff
Jeffrey D Angus
> On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 14:57:49 -0500, Jeffrey D Angus
> <jan...@suddenlink.net>wrote:
>
>>> On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 04:42:58 -0400, Jamie
>>> <jamie_ka1lpa_not_v...@charter.net>wrote:
>>>
>>>> some Laptops have a partition on the HD that has special set up
>>>> software at boot time to configure the proprietary onboard chips..
>>>> This also could be an issue..
>>> What laptop(s) would have this feature?
>> Compaq, they were nortorious for having a special partition they would
>> fail to boot if they didn't find.
>
> Compaq was the workstation of choice I would have thought I'd read
> about it somewhere. This must have been really proprietary as I've
> never heard of a chipset needing to load code from a fixed drive
> during boot. Can you give me an example of a model number and year
> and what operating system? Not that I don't believe you I'm just a bit
> taken back that onboard chips could be so proprietary that they
> couldn't be produced with their own non-volitile embedded instruction
> sets.
>
The Compaq Presario series comes to mind. They had a special 1-2 meg
partition on the hard drive that the bios looked for and not finding,
would hang the system. "OS NOT FOUND"
I found out the hard way, loading SCO Unix on one, going through the
entire ordeal of loading the operating system (and mistaking wiping
the service partition, then rebooting and finding I had to (a) replace
the service partition and reload the service software and (b) start
from scratch again with SCO Unix install.
Baron
I remember those ! Caused all sorts of mayhem. If I recall the trick
was to wipe the MBR and sys the drive from a floppy boot disk.
--
Best Regards:
Baron.
Jamie
> On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 04:42:58 -0400, Jamie
> <jamie_ka1lpa_not_v...@charter.net>wrote:
>
>
>> some Laptops have a partition on the HD that has special set up
>>software at boot time to configure the proprietary onboard chips..
>> This also could be an issue..
>
>
> What laptop(s) would have this feature?
Acers off the top of my head. Maybe not the current
ones.. But I had to correct an older one that did this.
The owner installed a newer OS, The process reported that
the current partition was not the primary one and asked if
he wish to make the install the primary one etc... etc..
And he did.....................
etc
All was going just fine until it was time to reboot, when
he did, windows could not find the CD rom, any longer.
To fix it, we move the HD to a USB external drive cable I have on
another PC and used the recover CD that restored the HD back to
original. Put it back in the laptop and then install the new OS over
the existing one. That worked out fine..
Take it for what you want, if you have been around long enough,
this isn't a new technique, things like this was done back in the
hay day to configure your HD, the device settings were on the HD
platter.
Jamie
Fun, isn't it :)
Jamie
> On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 15:42:49 -0500, Jeffrey D Angus
> Wel that's really odd. OS not found usually means the BIOS can't find
> the MBR or the bootloader can't find the partition, the directory of
> executables including the OS kernel as described in the boot.ini file
> of a Windows OS. I'll have to do some research and find out just what
> chips are uploaded code from this 'service' partition just to satisfy
> my curiosity.
A lot of these machines had/have simple controllers. Many of them really
don't function much, or not at all. The firmware is uploaded from that
partition or service boot that redirects the boot process, which is a
hard one to fix if you're trying to upgrade.. The devices come alive
when the firmware is uploaded and executed. This is kind of a neat way
of doing things because, you can control the firmware release depending
on the region, regulations etc... For example, lets say we program the
CD rom controller to not allow you to read some security CD's or regions
that don't match yours, Network access depending on where you are, this
way, they don't need different hardware PC's. All they need to do is put
in the correct HD that fits the location of where it's going.
It's also a good way I guess to perform firmware updates by simply
updating the service section and doing a cold boot. That's when the fun
starts if the update didn't go well :)
William R. Walsh
> Can you give me an example of a model number and year
> and what operating system?
As far as I know, Compaq never produced a system that *required* the
system partition to be in place. There was a set of bootable disks--
and I think you could even make them when booted from the system
partition--that would let you run system setup if you didn't have the
partion. Likewise, you could manage the partition from those
diskettes.
Perhaps it's possible that the system BIOS would become "annoyed" if
the partition wasn't removed in just the right way. I do know that I
ran a few systems without the partition and it always worked fine. (It
was a tremendous boon when dealing with users who could not leave
anything alone.)
Two such machines that I handled a lot of had this feature: The Compaq
Contura 410C and the Presario CDS526 both shipped with the setup
partition.
IBM took this idea a little further with what they called IML. This
was used in a few different models of the IBM PS/2 computers. In these
systems, there was just enough microcode present in a ROM on the
mainboard to let the system find its working BIOS from either a floppy
diskette or hard drive. In particular, the Models 56, 57, 76, 77 and
some configurations of the Model 90 and 95 used IML. I think it was
intended as an easier way to update the BIOS in these machines, the
working BIOS could be updated just by upgrading the system programs to
the latest release--a quick, easy and low risk thing to do. It was a
flashable BIOS before there really was such a thing.
The last of the PS/2s did use true flash BIOS technology with IBM's
SurePath. (There were only a very few machines to have that, however.)
William
bahrouz
room , check if there is a lamp or flurecent that keeps flickering in
the room that you use the computer in , if they fed from the same
power node with flickring flurecent the laptop will keep acting
crazy , its something i noticed ,it may help you determining what is
the real problem is , best wishes .
bahrouz
that is fed from a node connected to a flickery flurecent lamp the
laptop will go crazy , so try to connect it to another power outlet in
another room , and see if it works hope thats help :-)
Mike De Petris
thank you, anyway I tryed in two different houses, so this is not the
case
William Sommerwerck
Jerry Peters
> On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 14:57:49 -0500, Jeffrey D Angus
> <jan...@suddenlink.net>wrote:
>
>>> On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 04:42:58 -0400, Jamie
>>> <jamie_ka1lpa_not_v...@charter.net>wrote:
>>>
>>>> some Laptops have a partition on the HD that has special set up
>>>> software at boot time to configure the proprietary onboard chips..
>>>> This also could be an issue..
>>>
>>> What laptop(s) would have this feature?
>>
>>Compaq, they were nortorious for having a special partition they would
>>fail to boot if they didn't find.
>
> Compaq was the workstation of choice I would have thought I'd read
> about it somewhere. This must have been really proprietary as I've
> never heard of a chipset needing to load code from a fixed drive
> during boot. Can you give me an example of a model number and year
> and what operating system? Not that I don't believe you I'm just a bit
> taken back that onboard chips could be so proprietary that they
> couldn't be produced with their own non-volitile embedded instruction
> sets.
>
the ABIOS (advanced BIOS) from disk.
Jerry
Mike De Petris
<grizzledgee...@comcast.net> wrote:
> fluorescent, please.
:)
Mike De Petris
don't know what more to check!
Mike De Petris
the laptop is still apart, had little time to experiment, the two
fuses are ok will have to test capacitors, in the while I took away
the cmos battery and soldered two wires to use a standard cr2032 but
nothing changes
my idea now, is that if I am not able to find the faulty component,
that may well be a custom one, I will try to cut the connections to
the battery poles and connect using a 2-way deviator, so that in one
position the lapton can work like now, charging the battery when
switched off, or running on battery only, or trun the deviator/switch
and give voltage directly to the cutted terminals, excluding the
battery, with an external power supply, the pc should still detect the
battery charge level from other contacts of battery in place
should this work?