Laptop Power Cord Issue

[Acturus]

My wife called me on Wednesday of last week to tell me she heard the power cord to our laptop beep a couple times, and then the laptop's screen went dark, as if it had switched to battery power.

Well, our laptop is 4 years old at this point, so the battery will last all of 10 minutes. So, I've got a dead laptop on my hands.

It's an HP DV6000 model that was custom-built on their website, so I found a replacement cord for it for like $20, and ordered it.

Well yesterday, I happened to look at the laptop as it was sitting on the table, and noticed the charging lights were on even though the laptop wasn't powered on. So, I booted it up, and everything was good.

When I spun it around to show my wife the screen, however, I got some red sparks at the connection between the power cord and the power supply on the side. I immediately unplugged the power cord, and saw that the end of the power cord was a little singed.

Question to the tech-fiends here, is there any easy indication from all of this that the issue might be more than a bad power cord? My wife can't describe the beeping enough for me to do a beep code search or anything, and I'd hate to plug in a new power cord only to have it start a fire over a bad power supply or some nonsense. Originally, we were going to buy a new laptop anyway, but I'd prefer to be able to access this one even if it's just long enough to unload some documents.

[Bikpik]

Without actually seeing it, it could be the connector on the power cord itself (best case for you), or it could be the connection to the MB (worst case for you). If it's the MB connection, you're basically screwed, if it's the power cord, you're in luck since you have another one coming.

If the Laptop is toast and you need the data off of it, look up how to remove the hard drive and then attach it to another PC.

[Shenrien]

I suggest calling the manufacture, or getting some sort of customer support with HP and explaining your situation to them, as long as the power cord/power supply is an HP brand, and is suppose to be used for your product, and isn't 30 days old they should take it from you.

Alternatively you could return the power supply from where it came from, get your money back and try another one, but in my experiences with shit like this, I normally just take it straight up with the people who made the crap, and they take care of it rather quickly, getting a replacement of the item you purchased, and having you send them back the faulty product.

I had this happen to me with a modem I got from AT&T, I had a years warranty on it and like, a week after the warranty expired the shit died on me, and they wanted me to pay 100$ for a new modem and I bitched at them that their service is shit, and that if I'm gonna pay 100$ I might as well go switch to a new ISP, and they rushed a new modem out to me, and had me send in my broken one, then like a week after having it, it went to hell on me called them up, and they took care of it with no charge.

My advice for you is that I wouldn't risk plugging it back in due to it could damage the internal hardware as well as the risk of electrical fire if you saw red sparks coming from the power supply, just leave it alone call up HP and they should take care of it, if they don't then call up the people who you ordered the power supply from and see about getting a replacement.

[Acturus]

The laptop is so old at this point that it's going to be worth my time more to just replace it for anything that's more than $50.

I bought a second power cord off the interwebz simply because it was an easy (and cheap) step. The last time I wanted HP to do something about an unrelated issue, they wanted $170. Their repair service sucks balls for anything that isn't covered by the warrenty (and I have issues with them in general, so I'm not going to call them, not for this).

The sparking seemed localized to the spot where the cord met the laptop, and the singing was on the cord itself, and I smelled no smoke from the laptop (I know, not a great test, but it's something).

[Isiolia]

The beeping from the AC adapter is pretty common for a failed HP adapter (at least). It's just a steady chirp/beep type sound, not an error code.
If you'd like to hear it, I probably have 20-30 of them floating around the office. HP can't make AC adapters for shit.

If you really don't care about fixing the laptop, then just pull the hard drive to get your data off. Can get an enclosure or an adapter cable for probably less than the cost of yet another AC adapter. If it happens to be a SATA drive, then you could put it in a desktop as well.

[fishstix]

I remember your HP laptop troubles the replacement ac adapter, I'm assuming you got some 3rd party adapter to save some money? did it have the exact same power specs like the input/output voltage/amps and all that jazz, idk

[Seanr]

It's more than likely either your Wall Adapter that plugs into the computer OR the DC Power Jack...

I had this problem, my laptop sat there for a good 3 years almost until i bought this part to fix it. It it not a part of the motherboard, only connected by 2 wires.

http://www.impactcomputers.com/431446-001.html
http://www.laptopking.com/dcjack/999580.jpg

Anyone know of a better place?

[Acturus]

I remember your HP laptop troubles the replacement ac adapter, I'm assuming you got some 3rd party adapter to save some money? did it have the exact same power specs like the input/output voltage/amps and all that jazz, idk

Yeah, I rage about very few things, but HP-brand computers is officially one of them.

And the power cord I found on the interwebz is HP-brand. A universal power cord that matches up to my laptop from a local store was going to be $80 (i.e. not worth it).

As for the wall outlet, I've had the laptop plugged into an extension cord that's been plugged into the same outlet as one of our table lamps for many months at this point. The laptop never really leaves the living room anymore.

At any rate, I guess we'll see what happens when the new power cord comes in. At the very worst, I need about 10 minutes worth of power to grab my comic strip pictures and put them on USB. Anything more than that would be useful, but not critical.

[fishstix]

Hmm, if it's HP branded and slated to work for that particular laptop model, it should~ work, but there's always a chance they sent you a faulty one anyways.

irrelevant to your problem but yeah, your stories is what sparked my negativity towards HP laptops My mom bought my dad a small HP laptop which was always hot for no reason. After a while (after warranty), it ended up slowing down and checking the CPU clock speed, it only ran at 50% always, never being able to use it's full CPU capacity. I took it apart to see if there's any dust and discovered that the GPU chip doesn't have any sort of cooling for it, no heatsink, no fan. I assume it overheated (probably what happened to your laptop back in the day) and damaged the nearby CPU.

I tell my friends not to buy HP, but they do anyways. One of them, their keyboard stopped working after it overheated and had to get it replaced. Upon getting it back, FFXI never played the same and would crash more than often. Another friend's built-in mic stopped working a few weeks after getting it. HP's high-end laptops might be nice, a 3rd friend has had 0 problems, but the low-end ones seem to be crappy. A 4th friend is getting a decked out HP laptop also -_-

[Acturus]

Hmm, if it's HP branded and slated to work for that particular laptop model, it should~ work, but there's always a chance they sent you a faulty one anyways.

irrelevant to your problem but yeah, your stories is what sparked my negativity towards HP laptops My mom bought my dad a small HP laptop which was always hot for no reason. After a while (after warranty), it ended up slowing down and checking the CPU clock speed, it only ran at 50% always, never being able to use it's full CPU capacity. I took it apart to see if there's any dust and discovered that the GPU chip doesn't have any sort of cooling for it, no heatsink, no fan. I assume it overheated (probably what happened to your laptop back in the day) and damaged the nearby CPU.

I tell my friends not to buy HP, but they do anyways. One of them, their keyboard stopped working after it overheated and had to get it replaced. Upon getting it back, FFXI never played the same and would crash more than often. Another friend's built-in mic stopped working a few weeks after getting it. HP's high-end laptops might be nice, a 3rd friend has had 0 problems, but the low-end ones seem to be crappy. A 4th friend is getting a decked out HP laptop also -_-

Y'know, my HP's original issue stemmed from overheating affecting the video card. Part of my complaint years later was that they installed a heatsink without telling me the first time I had a problem with overheating, and I was supposed to 1) magically know it was there, and 2) be eternally grateful that they installed it when it was supposed to cost me X dollars.

All I know is that, when the Customer Service Manager tells me in no uncertain terms that HP doesn't believe in their products for longer than the warrenty is valid, then there's a problem with the company.