700m weird random shutdown problem!

Question

I bought a 700m in July that has been working great, with one exception.   At seemingly random moments, the system makes a little *CLINK* sound and instantly goes dark -- no power whatsoever.  What's more, I can't even turn it back on as the power button is completely unresponsive.   In fact the only way I can get it to power back on is to first unplug it from the AC and remove the battery.  Then I plug it back in and start it up and everything is fine.   So far this has happened maybe five or six times over the course of several months.  I haven't gotten any error messages and aside from randomly shutting itself down the computer seems to work great.  I hesitate to send it in for warranty work since it's a minor inconvenience at most.   Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts as to what could cause this.  Thanks!     System Info: This is a 1.8ghz Pentium M machine that originally shipped with 256mb of RAM.  I added a 512MB stick of RAM the day it arrived.  60GB hard drive.  I'm running Windows XP Home with Service Pack 2.

Suzbandit · Answer

Your laptop is probably set in the hibernate mode, which will shut down your computer and not restart until you take out the battery. Go into the "adjust power properties" section on the AC power icon, located on the toolbar. You can switch it to "never" go into hibernate or stand by. I did, because I got tired of having to take my battery out to turn my laptop back on! LOL

:smileyhappy:

Geek_5000 · Answer

Thanks for the suggestion, however it's not a hibernation issue.  (It's already set to 'Never'.)   The problem happens when the battery is fully charged and the AC adapter is plugged in.  There are also no warning messages (ie, your computer is going to hibernate now).  It just blinks off like somebody flipped a light switch.   I'm convinced this is a hardware issue and not a simple problem with my settings.  But I am curious to know if you have any idea what kind of hardware problem would/could cause this.   ???

Suzbandit · Answer

I really don't know what it could be then. If the computer runs fine and only shuts off at random, it may be something in your motherboard. Have you called Dell or better yet, emailed customer support? I wish I could be of more help!

Hope the problem is resolved soon for you!

:smileyhappy:

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700m weird random shutdown problem!

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