This one has me stumped.

[ariansworld]

My co worker came to me yesterday, with a computer problem.   He said that he had a spyware problem, which is now fixed; but here is the kicker.  When ever he plugs the laptop into the wall charger, it will grind to a halt and lock up, but when he unplugs it; it is just fine.  Personally, I have never heard of a laptop doing this. I am thinking it might have something to do with his wallcharger, but I haven't a clue.

Any input will be greatly appreciated.

By the way, the lap top is a Dell inspiron 1505.


Thanks,
Arian

[BaldEagl]

I don't mean to hijack your thread but this is a similar issue that's got me similarly stumped.

Since my brother bought his laptop, if the AC power is connected when he goes to shut it down it will automatically restart.  As soon as the AC is disconnected it shuts down normally.  It did this in Vista and still does it after a clean Windows 7 install.

Maybe somehow related?  His is a Toshiba Satellite.

[Skuzzy]

Disable power management and see if that cures the issues.

[humble]

I'm actually troubleshooting my sister in laws Dell laptop for similar issues. It's got some hardware/power related anomalies and doesn't "feel right". No detectable virus or spyware and no hardware issues I can isolate as of yet. Very strange so far...

[MrRiplEy[H]]

It could also be a case of insufficient cooling -> plug in AC the power saving features kick off and cpu starts to grind at full speed leading to overheat and crash.

Anything can happen, I had a laptop return from service with a misaligned cpu cooler once. Symptom was fan screaming full speed and frequent crashing. This was after 3rd loong service run and 3rd new motherboard to the laptop.. Finally I gave up with it and bought another one.

Later when a familymember requested a freebie laptop I dug it up and opened it to see if I could find the problem. Basically dismantled everything and while screwing the cpu cooler back on I noticed it had a tendency to catch onto a corner so it wouldn't seat in all the way. Little bit of force, snap and no more fan screaming + stable laptop. It's still in use at my grandpa today.

[Skuzzy]

Vista had/has a serious bug with power management that is supposed to be fixed in Windows 7.

[Bino]

It could also be a case of insufficient cooling -> plug in AC the power saving features kick off and cpu starts to grind at full speed leading to overheat and crash
...

Also, if the laptop has been in use for some time, the heatsink might be dusty.  I recently had to disassemble and clean the CPU heatsink on my wife's old Dell laptop.  There was a thick layer of dust - looked like felt - covering the cooling fins, blocking almost all of the air flow.

[MadHatter]

Toshibas had a problem with that a while ago. It's supposed to be fixed. Supposedly it was something about the power jack was to close to a few things on the mobo and power was "leaking" into the MOBO sending different signals. One thing to try (and this will sound stupid) is to run your laptop and drain the battery completely, then charge. Also pop it open and look for dust near the input and use compressed air to blow it out.  Ariansworld, tell your co-worker to try a different pack, if the issue is still there, have him run a restore disk. Sounds like whoever fixed the spyware problem may have accidently tweaked the power management wrong.

[ariansworld]

Well, he still has the problem.  We have tried disabling the power management to no gain.  Next step will be to open it up and clean it out and see if that will fix it. If that does not work, the next step will be to use DBAN to comletely wipe the hard drive and start fresh.

Any other input is greatly apreciated.


Arian