Power Problems

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08-24-2012, 12:31 AM
gateway

Power Problems

My power adapter seems to be having trouble connecting with the power jack in the back of my laptop. The effect is really visible because my screen brightness changes everytime I move from being on adapter power to being on battery power. I've been working on looking for fixes for this.

Today, however, I just got home and my laptop was on stand-by, which is odd because I'm positive I powered it down before work, so it must have powered itself on and then went on stand-by after 20 minutes.

It's an old Dell laptop (Inspiron 8600), and I'm hoping to get a little more time out of it, but should I be concerned about safety if it's turning on by itself now?
Thoughts?
08-24-2012, 03:32 AM
Steve R Jones

The screen brightness deal is normal when going on battery power. You can probably disable that in Power settings.

Odds are it didn't turn itself on. I wouldn't worry about it till you see it doing it all the time.

A few times a year I get to the office and find my main pc on and logged in... Could have sworn I shut it down the day before... But obviously I didn't;)
03-21-2015, 01:11 AM
gateway

Update: The power socket ended up dying, but it hung in there for a couple more years with me jamming it in there and keeping it in place with books. Duct tape probably would've worked too.
03-23-2015, 12:32 PM
proxops-pete

Yeah, that was going to be my guess. It was very common on my old Compaq laptop where the jack would get shorted and/or broken. Not sure if you are good at soldering but that is an option. Most PC repair shops will want at least $100 to fix it.
03-23-2015, 08:31 PM
gateway

Quote:

Originally Posted by proxops-pete

Yeah, that was going to be my guess. It was very common on my old Compaq laptop where the jack would get shorted and/or broken. Not sure if you are good at soldering but that is an option. Most PC repair shops will want at least $100 to fix it.

I've actually been thinking about this laptop lately because I'm going to attempt to do some soldering with my cell phone (usb port broke, so no power - seems to be a theme).
If I went the soldering route, can I just pick up a basic soldering kit from an electronics store or does such a thing not exist?