Apologies For Lack Of Me

[grendel]

got home this evening to find my usual laptop dead as a dodo, after some playing I got it fired up, then noticed the power supply was red hot (and I mean too hot to touch) so a quick unsucessful hunt for a spare power suppy (I did have a universal one somewhere- I think my daughter nicked it ) anyway typing this on my ubuntu mobile laptop while trying to get another old laptop to connect to the network. so if you dont see me anymore this evening you will know why.

[Baitrunner]

Grendel if it's a Dell I may have a spare you can have. 

[grendel]

no, this is a dell, but has nothing set up. this may be the solution, my old laptop is now 8 years old, and until today gave no problems. I am still testing the power supply for my old machine, its running shutdown (just charging) without getting hot. next to try bootig it again.

[imtamping2]

I would have booted it 1 hour ago......

[TheQ]

I would suspect it's not the power supply, but the battery pack is on it's way out and the PSU is working too hard to compensate and therefore getting hot.

[Viking23]

1 hour ago, TheQ said:

I would suspect it's not the power supply, but the battery pack is on it's way out and the PSU is working too hard to compensate and therefore getting hot.

This is a great possibility, can you remove the battery pack and connect the supply, I would think the laptop was designed to cope with that... 

[grendel]

2 hours ago, TheQ said:

I would suspect it's not the power supply, but the battery pack is on it's way out and the PSU is working too hard to compensate and therefore getting hot.

well it is the original battery, from 2008, off mains power it now lasts about 5 minutes.

Unfortunately I tried that (removing the battery) and the power supply still gets very hot. on standby with just the battery charging it is fine. I have ordered a cheap universal laptop supply (90W instead of the 65W supplied - to allow a bit of head room on the power consumption) and will see if that copes with it - to be honest if it wasnt for the fact that it has everything set up the way I want it, I would have replaced it years ago, we do have plenty of spare laptops in various states of health lying around- but none with the same resolution screen :-( 

it has worn through plastic on the edges through use, a broken hinge and various other cracks on the lid so it is probably near its end anyway, worst case, the hard drive will come out and be added to the server tower. but it is a faithful old companion.