Something just went pop!

[R2D2]

My laptop just made an electrical "pop" kind of noise followed by a slight trace of a burning smell. Everything is still working though???? Any thoughts anyone? Cheers

 

[cl55 amg]

power supply?

 

[Palfrem]

Anti-virus software just detected and zapped a bug?

 

[whitenemesis]

Still working.... but will it come back on once switched off?

Power supply went in my daughter's laptop, all seemed fine until a reboot. The supply took out a bank of RAM too ....

 

[fuzzer]

its prob just blown a cap..

 

[R2D2]

power supply?

Checked and still working/charging.

Still working.... but will it come back on once switched off?

Power supply went in my daughter's laptop, all seemed fine until a reboot. The supply took out a bank of RAM too ....

Rebooted and all seems fine.

its prob just blown a cap..

but without any effect? I'll run Belarc and see if everything is still showing up....

 

[wemorgan]

Head gasket failure?.......am I in the wrong sub-fourm

 

[Dieselman]

its prob just blown a cap..

but without any effect? I'll run Belarc and see if everything is still showing up....

Can be as most caps are for smoothing AC ripples. Pull the PSU out and have a look for a split polyester cap. For now just cut it out so it doesn't short out, but in course replace it.

 

[renault12ts]

Checked and still working/charging.



Rebooted and all seems fine.



but without any effect? I'll run Belarc and see if everything is still showing up....

Back up your files...just in case.

 

[R2D2]

I've just run Belarc and I still have 4GB of Ram and all drives seem to be present and correct. Most strange, at least its still working

 

[219]

Still got 'snap' & 'crackle' to go then

 

[Dieselman]

Still got 'snap' & 'crackle' to go then

 

[grober]

Fan burned out? Check for air from the exhaust port. Your CPU could be cooking up nicely as we speak?

 

[removed]

Have you checked the battery's capacity? Depending on a laptop, its battery could have a few modules/cells, and some batteries are able to survive loss of one or more of those. Not sure how to check that in Windows, but there are a couple of excellent apps to do that in Linux - e.g. acpi; and of course, System Profiler in Mac.

 

[Ted]

A common reason for this (from the past) was the failure of an MOV (metal oxide varistor).
This was (is) connected across the mains live inputs to absorb any transient mains spikes.
Over time the potential at which it conducts goes down, and therefore it conducts 'lower down' in the spike (if that makes any sense). This means that it will need to dissipate more power.
Eventually it just pops - along with the burning smell.
So it doesn't stop anything from working, but your protection against mains spike is reduced.

 

[R2D2]

Thank you all for your excellent answers and help