Solve : Oh my god, what have I done??

1.	Solve : Oh my god, what have I done??
Answer» I was troubleshooting my faulty disk drive that I plug into my Y510p laptop. The only thing I hadn`t tried was plugging something in to the port by the USB port on the disk drive. It matched with a power cord (with an adapter that says input 120V output 9V or 3V) that my guitar pedal uses so I plugged that into the drive and then plugged in the drives USB to the laptop. The laptop immediately shut off and won't come back on. I'M SO STUPID! Freaking hindsight bias! What have I done?!?! Is there any hope or did I completey blow out my laptop? That laptop is my life...Now I'm stuck using the Internet Channel on my Wii, pointing to and clicking on each individual letter on my TV screen to create this post. When the battery is in the laptop it won't turn on at all, but take out the battery and the power button will light up but the screen doesn't come on. The laptop is plugged in in both of these cases. What have I done, what have I done...Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but USB ports are very sensitive to power being forced backwards into them, and it is very likely there has been damage done to the motherboard of the laptop. Try removing the battery, and power from the laptop. Hold the power button for 30s, and then press the power button 10 or so times to drain any residual power from the laptop. Plug the power back in and try to boot again. The only laptops I know of with USB port fuses are Sony Vaio machines. Does your external drive have a power connector normally or is it powered via the USB? I am interested to see what port you are talking about here, the only thing I can think of is a firewire connector or something similar. The USB controller chip is likely blown. If you were lucky and able to locate this chip, you could carefully remove the chip and maybe it would boot if the blown chip is holding down the 5V but chances are your looking at buying a new laptop since who doesnt use USB anymore these days and swapping a main board to get USB back is not an easy as well as not a cheap repair. Its too bad its not a desktop computer as for a desktop is easier and cheaper to fix. I have fixed many desktops that took lightning strikes etc as well as one that took a direct hit and amazingly the CPU and RAM was good, but the PSU, Motherboard, and the HDD was toast. The CPU and RAM I would have thought would have been the most sensitive to a high voltage spike, but somehow the ELECTRONS from the strike took a path of least resistance that skipped by the CPU and RAM. I was able to install the CPU and RAM into a new motherboard and install a new HDD and PSU and the system ran flawlessly. Even Memtest86 proved that the RAM was untouched by the lightning strike. Quote from: Kurtiskain on May 15, 2014, 08:19:30 PM Does your external drive have a power connector normally or is it powered via the USB? I am interested to see what port you are talking about here, the only thing I can think of is a firewire connector or something similar. Powered via USB. It was the only chance I had and I was desperate to play a game before the multiplayer went down. Now I've paid the price. There's no way I can afford anything. Of course this happens on the very day that my summer break starts. Maybe I'll enroll in the summer semester just to break up the boring heck I've DOOMED myself to. I tried the power button thing. It didn't work. Thanks for the insight Dave.Then yes unfortunately the laptop is dead...any personal data should be retrieveable from the hard drive so any studies/papers/essays are not lost at least.Thanks for posting. I think I'm going to cry.Do you have any friends with a old computer they might lend to you ot give to you. Even a 10 year old computer is something than nothing. I have a computer from 2001 that still works fine surfing the web, however the gaming is very limited to simple games or games that came out around or before that era such as Diablo 2 etc on the 16MB Radeon Moble GPU on the Pentium 3 1.0Ghz Dell Laptop with 512MB RAM, running dual-boot Linux Mint 9 LTS and Windows XP Home on 30GB HDD. I got this laptop for free from prior owner who was looking for a way to dispose of it without having to pay a disposal fee since dumps cost $5 or more for disposal of COMPUTERS. And if anyone has a laptop or a tower they want to get rid of, I dont mind PICKING it over or fixing it and paying out of my own pocket the $5 etc to get rid of the useless scrap. There is also FreeCycle which may or may not be available to you depending on your location. Great way to get stuff for free : https://www.freecycle.org/Do you happen to know the model number or any other information about the drive? What was the port you stuck a power jack into for? (Obviously not power, as you've come to learn). For what it is worth if you have a USB Keyboard, that works with the Wii's Browser. As you've learned plugging random things into exposed power plugs is not a proper troubleshooting step. I've had friends do the same thing before they gave up and asked me to take a look, and their steps were to basically take every unplugged connector inside the machine and shove it wherever it fits, completely destroying the entire system, which was, of course, my fault somehow. Live and Learn. It's a shame you had to learn at the expense of such a nice laptop, though. If it's still under warranty you might be able to contact the retailer it was purchased from or Lenovo directly, as long as you omit the detail where you shoved arbitrary power backwards into the USB Host Controller. Quote I have fixed many desktops that took lightning strikes etc as well as one that took a direct hit and amazingly the CPU and RAM was good, but the PSU, Motherboard, and the HDD was toast. CPU and RAM were probably fine because they are "BEHIND" the Motherboard's Voltage Regulator Modules which probably blew up.Sorry to hear about that. I've done a stupid thing here and there with my computers over the years. Hope you got all your data and stuff back and stored securely and hopefully you can get a new computer soon. Sad to say you cannot fix this. Have a computer technician check it if some parts needed replacement. If you're lucky you might just have a broken fuse on the power regulator.

Answer»

I was troubleshooting my faulty disk drive that I plug into my Y510p laptop. The only thing I hadn`t tried was plugging something in to the port by the USB port on the disk drive. It matched with a power cord (with an adapter that says input 120V output 9V or 3V) that my guitar pedal uses so I plugged that into the drive and then plugged in the drives USB to the laptop. The laptop immediately shut off and won't come back on. I'M SO STUPID! Freaking hindsight bias! What have I done?!?!

Is there any hope or did I completey blow out my laptop? That laptop is my life...Now I'm stuck using the Internet Channel on my Wii, pointing to and clicking on each individual letter on my TV screen to create this post.

When the battery is in the laptop it won't turn on at all, but take out the battery and the power button will light up but the screen doesn't come on. The laptop is plugged in in both of these cases.

What have I done, what have I done...Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but USB ports are very sensitive to power being forced backwards into them, and it is very likely there has been damage done to the motherboard of the laptop.
Try removing the battery, and power from the laptop. Hold the power button for 30s, and then press the power button 10 or so times to drain any residual power from the laptop. Plug the power back in and try to boot again.

The only laptops I know of with USB port fuses are Sony Vaio machines.

Does your external drive have a power connector normally or is it powered via the USB? I am interested to see what port you are talking about here, the only thing I can think of is a firewire connector or something similar.
The USB controller chip is likely blown. If you were lucky and able to locate this chip, you could carefully remove the chip and maybe it would boot if the blown chip is holding down the 5V but chances are your looking at buying a new laptop since who doesnt use USB anymore these days and swapping a main board to get USB back is not an easy as well as not a cheap repair.

Its too bad its not a desktop computer as for a desktop is easier and cheaper to fix. I have fixed many desktops that took lightning strikes etc as well as one that took a direct hit and amazingly the CPU and RAM was good, but the PSU, Motherboard, and the HDD was toast. The CPU and RAM I would have thought would have been the most sensitive to a high voltage spike, but somehow the ELECTRONS from the strike took a path of least resistance that skipped by the CPU and RAM. I was able to install the CPU and RAM into a new motherboard and install a new HDD and PSU and the system ran flawlessly. Even Memtest86 proved that the RAM was untouched by the lightning strike. Quote from: Kurtiskain on May 15, 2014, 08:19:30 PM

Does your external drive have a power connector normally or is it powered via the USB? I am interested to see what port you are talking about here, the only thing I can think of is a firewire connector or something similar.

Powered via USB. It was the only chance I had and I was desperate to play a game before the multiplayer went down. Now I've paid the price. There's no way I can afford anything. Of course this happens on the very day that my summer break starts. Maybe I'll enroll in the summer semester just to break up the boring heck I've DOOMED myself to.

I tried the power button thing. It didn't work.

Thanks for the insight Dave.Then yes unfortunately the laptop is dead...any personal data should be retrieveable from the hard drive so any studies/papers/essays are not lost at least.Thanks for posting. I think I'm going to cry.Do you have any friends with a old computer they might lend to you ot give to you. Even a 10 year old computer is something than nothing. I have a computer from 2001 that still works fine surfing the web, however the gaming is very limited to simple games or games that came out around or before that era such as Diablo 2 etc on the 16MB Radeon Moble GPU on the Pentium 3 1.0Ghz Dell Laptop with 512MB RAM, running dual-boot Linux Mint 9 LTS and Windows XP Home on 30GB HDD.

I got this laptop for free from prior owner who was looking for a way to dispose of it without having to pay a disposal fee since dumps cost $5 or more for disposal of COMPUTERS. And if anyone has a laptop or a tower they want to get rid of, I dont mind PICKING it over or fixing it and paying out of my own pocket the $5 etc to get rid of the useless scrap.

There is also FreeCycle which may or may not be available to you depending on your location. Great way to get stuff for free : https://www.freecycle.org/Do you happen to know the model number or any other information about the drive? What was the port you stuck a power jack into for? (Obviously not power, as you've come to learn).

For what it is worth if you have a USB Keyboard, that works with the Wii's Browser.

As you've learned plugging random things into exposed power plugs is not a proper troubleshooting step. I've had friends do the same thing before they gave up and asked me to take a look, and their steps were to basically take every unplugged connector inside the machine and shove it wherever it fits, completely destroying the entire system, which was, of course, my fault somehow.

Live and Learn. It's a shame you had to learn at the expense of such a nice laptop, though. If it's still under warranty you might be able to contact the retailer it was purchased from or Lenovo directly, as long as you omit the detail where you shoved arbitrary power backwards into the USB Host Controller.

Quote

I have fixed many desktops that took lightning strikes etc as well as one that took a direct hit and amazingly the CPU and RAM was good, but the PSU, Motherboard, and the HDD was toast.

CPU and RAM were probably fine because they are "BEHIND" the Motherboard's Voltage Regulator Modules which probably blew up.Sorry to hear about that. I've done a stupid thing here and there with my computers over the years. Hope you got all your data and stuff back and stored securely and hopefully you can get a new computer soon. Sad to say you cannot fix this. Have a computer technician check it if some parts needed replacement. If you're lucky you might just have a broken fuse on the power regulator.

Solve : Oh my god, what have I done??

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