Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Before I get to the main reason for this post, I was signing up for an account on a message board. I think it likes me!


Now, my laptop. A few months ago it had this same problem. I use it like a desktop machine, so I leave it plugged in 24/7. One day I noticed the battery icon wasn't full anymore, so I hovered over it. "Plugged in, not charging" was the worrying message.

I phoned Toshiba tech support, and the person was amazing. He knew just how to fix it, he was a pleasure to speak to (clear, calm, knew what he was doing). I can't recall what the fix was, but I think it was a change in the registry (or BIOS? Something I usually wouldn't touch on my own).

Months passed, then Saturday I noticed the same thing. Battery wasn't full and "plugged in, not charging". So I called tech support again.

Night and day difference. It was a stereotypical bad India support call. The person clearly had no idea what she was doing. She had an accent so heavy I could barely understand her. She gave me incorrect information just to get me off the phone. (A different phone number I was supposed to call for help... but the number didn't work.)

So I called back again. Different person, but same thing. I know there are good India support people, but this was not one of them. Once more she gave me incorrect information to get off the phone. (A website to order parts from... but the website didn't exist, just redirected to elsewhere on the Toshiba site.)

But in all my rebootings and fiddling with the cables, somehow it started charging again. Not wanting to deal with these people more (I spent TWO HOURS on the phone with them), I decided to hope for the best and hope it wasn't going to happen again.

Today it's happening again. "Plugged in, not charging." I've had this laptop a year or so now, it always stays at 100% and "plugged in, charging".

Does anyone have any idea how to fix it? The first India person suggested that I needed a new AC adapter, but that good support person from months back said the problem had nothing to do with that, and when I talked to a warranty parts person, he agreed.

This is my first laptop ever, so I don't know much about these things. :/

Edit: Windows 7, battery light is not on (the one on the edge of the laptop), AC adapter is hot (it's always hotter than I think it should be).

Nearly literally exploded. On iPad, forgive typos.

For a week or so, computer seemed to be overheating. Cleaned out dust, opened housing, left open.

Came home today. Soon after sitting down, it powered down like overheating normal. I reached to turn it off so I could blow it out again, and it exploded. Electricity arced out almost a foot wide and there were two loud bangs and then another electric arc. Never saw anything like it. Dived to unplug it.apartment smells like electric fire.

Carted it off to computer repair place. They might call me tonight with what,s wrong, but it might be tomorrow. No computer D: too hard to make big unhappy faces, imagine more.

iPad has Twitter and AIM but not MSN/Trillian. No idea what to do with no computer. Sad face.

Well, by hook or by crook, I'm getting my machine home today.

I brought it in for a noisy fan. It was dusty as hell when I pulled it out from under my desk, so I expected it to just need the fans/inside cleaned. (yeah, usually I could try to do it myself, but I had the Groupon.) I called them today for an update, and apparently my graphics card is failing. My graphics have been 100% fine up until this point, the fan noise just kicked in when WoW (and only WoW) had been running for a while. He said if I don't get the card fixed, he expected it to die soon. He's doing tests to see if the motherboard is failing, too.

So I could:

1) Let them change the graphics card (cost of card, labor). On the plus side, it would be an upgrade.
(Edit: 1a) Card and motherboard too, if he says it needs it.)
2) Just take my machine and use it until the card dies (if it does).

You people who know more about this hardware stuff, what do you think? He says my graphics card is dying on his tests, but that it works perfectly fine seems odd to me...

Last night I realized another flaw of my not having my machine: I hadn't expected it to be out of my control for so long, all my passwords are in place, people at the shop could log in to PayPal or any number of other sites -- not to mention see this post/my LJ, as the link to it as on the top of my homepage. Blah!

Either way, tonight I shall have my machine back!

Google failed me, does anyone have any ideas about this? First time this ever happened.

I always leave my computer on overnight. When I woke up this morning I had a blank screen (no taskbar, none of the open windows, no icon, just my wallpaper) and in the lower right hand corner there was a tiny little cell phone icon with a blue wave coming out of it, as if it were sending a signal. It looked like someone was using my computer remotely.

However, my virus scanner is up to date and says nothing's going on. I'm running another spyware scan now.

I've never seen a cell phone icon on my computer before, ever. It was small, about a quarter the size of a normal icon.

This really doesn't sound like a good thing, but if if my virus scanner (AVG) doesn't find anything, how am I supposed to go about this?