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 Post Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2017 11:43 pm 
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Patty and I have often said that to totally shut down a system you have to remove ALL power sources. On a desktop this means not just shutting down but also removing the power plug from the wall. On a laptop this means removing the AC adapter AND the battery.

I got handed a laptop that would not even light up the power light on the system, it was totally dead. Just to be sure that the AC adapter was not dead I took it to work and used a meter to check that it did give an output; it did.

Pulled the battery and used just the AC adapter and it booted just fine. Put the battery back in along with the AC adapter and, again, it booted just fine.

In this case the issue was that the battery was allowed to drain to zero, not a good thing. Removing ALL power sources allowed the hardware to truly reset. The system is actually fine and healthy. Even the battery is taking a charge and the system will, once again, run off just the battery.

The only real point of this post is to remind that the very first step in troubleshooting a problem system is to remove all possible power sources. It also helps if you tap the power button a few times with all power sources removed. It may seem strange but test it some time especially if you run a desktop system... Unplug the thing from the wall and hit the power button. Most likely the power light will come on and the fans will start to spin before it dies even though there is no actual power source connected. This is caused by an electronic component in a computer called a capacitor. A capacitor is basically a battery. It holds a charge for a bit of time. Hitting the power button with power disconnected discharges these little batteries truly removing ALL power from the system.

It is amazing how many issues this will solve. :)

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 Post Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2017 12:34 am 
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Yes, I've seen it also, Jay.

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 Post Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2017 1:21 am 
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Yep, I know that you have which is why I didn't hesitate to include you as to also have given this advice. :)

I just thought that this basic troubleshooting step was worth putting out again. ;)

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 Post Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2017 11:37 am 
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"A capacitor is basically a battery. It holds a charge for a bit of time"

If shorted make that a very small bit of time! During my college days guys from the auto tech program thought it hilarious to charge up a capacitor from a distributor and toss it to an unsuspecting victim.

Unplug and hit the power button is very good advice for anyone poking around in electronic equipment. While I have no personal experience with it, shorting out a large power capacitor results in a rather dramatic display. If one's hand is the shorting element the result is quite painful according to those who have done so.

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 Post Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2017 2:29 pm 
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These days that tip is more crucial. Used to be a reboot solved a lot of problems, but I've seen were the reboot didn't help, but powering down the system for a few minutes and then restarting cleared the cobwebs out.

The laptop batteries thing made me chuckle. My lenovo has two batteries, one is removeable, the other is permanent. Progress???


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 Post Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2017 5:30 pm 
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Ha ha... only Lenovo. Can't stand their products.

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 Post Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2017 6:58 pm 
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Most of them are garbage, they maintained the quality on the Thinkpad line. They have proven to be very good machines.


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 Post Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2017 8:35 pm 
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I wouldn't go near a Thinkpad. They may have maintained quality, but they made some design decisions around BIOS and security chips on the motherboard that inevitably caused problems for consumers. Maybe they worked for enterprise machines, but they did not work for consumers. If you asked me what problems they caused, I couldn't tell you, Peter, it's been so long; but it was in the area of system stability and exactly who owned your machine also. The software package they used to interface with said chips was crap and bloated and unstable.

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 Post Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2017 10:18 pm 
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Well I do know what you are saying. My first one died because of the security chip. On the new one I did get it with that "feature" and I neutered all their software. Knock on wood but so far so good. Course one good thing is I am the only one who has had it's paws on it.


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 Post Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2017 10:36 pm 
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Speaking on strange things with laptops I'm about to crack a password on one. It is legit as to the current owner at least but was bought at a pawn shop and, I think, was originally a corporate system as the password hint is "store number".

Anyway it belonged to a friend's father-in-law and he can't remember the password as he has been ill and has not used the thing in ages. I performed an operation that should have cleared the password but it did not work where it has before. I used a different aspect of the same operation to create another admin account which worked fine. Both operations are done from a boot CD.

So now I'm in the system and go to delete the old account and it refuses to be removed. I said the heck with it and did a clean install of Win 7 and all was well so I take it to work today to return to my friend. I'm at work and it dawns on me that I forgot to set up her password so I did so at work. The system refused to accept the password after a re-boot. While possible I seriously doubt that I made the same typo on both entries when setting it up. I'm waiting to see if it will allow the password to be reset or if I'll have to setup another account again.

OK, all done. My boot CD had no problem resetting the password on the clean install. I tried setting up the password again and everything worked so it would seem that I did in fact enter it wrong twice while initially setting up. Don't know how I could have entered the same typo twice when setting up but apparently did do so... :dunno:

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 Post Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2017 2:18 pm 
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Yes, I always neutered their software also, on client machines.

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