2

I have a laptop which gave a small "plof" sound, after that the laptop was totally dead. The smell is like ozone, the same when a power-supply from a desktop computer stops working. This is new to me when it's on a laptop.

When I open the laptop, there is a strong a ozone smell from the fan.

My question..

There is a cooling block on the processor with a copper cooling element, which has an exhaust on left right of the laptop.

Can it be that the cooling fan just broken which produces that smell or can it be something else?

I'm 90% sure it's not the harddisk, because the smell is not on that side of the laptop.

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4

First you can 100% the laptop hard drive by putting it in an enclosure made to check out laptop hard drives and see if it will come on in another PC.

As for the smell it could be a number of different components that are causing the smell (which should probably not be inhaled too much out of common safety practice). If it was just the fan there should be a chance the laptop will come back on if just for a few seconds to either give a cpu fan error of some kind.

Improve this answer
4
  • When I plug in the ac adapter, the light on the power ada[ter starts flickering and makes a little of a scratching sound. When I plugin the adapter, the smell starts getting stronger. I think the laptop is toast.
    – Chris
    Commented Sep 17, 2009 at 19:06
  • 3
    It does sound like you have lost the laptop. I would still try to put the hard drive in an enclosure to get any important data off.
    – mosiac
    Commented Sep 17, 2009 at 19:10
  • Yes indeed, bad luck for the owner, thanks for your help.
    – Chris
    Commented Sep 17, 2009 at 19:27
  • 1
    From what I've read it seems like a capacitor has ruptured. If you're willing to take it apart and upload pictures, the folks at badcaps.net have a forum where they will walk you through diagnosis and repair. I'm not affiliated with them in any way, but they did help me get a dead Acer LCD monitor working.
    – Tyler Faile
    Commented Jul 19, 2012 at 14:39

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .