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Anyone have a BJ kill, yes **KILL DEAD** your laptop/PC?!

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Posted by: keltraine

I just realized that I never actually posted about this in the multitude of other things I've been asking about since I got my BJ about a month ago...maybe it was a little ostrich syndrome since I love my BJ so much, but here goes as a warning for other folks, and to see if this is a more widespread problem, or just an unlucky one-off for me...

So I had the BJ twice kill my laptop. Once when I unplugged it it powered down the laptop instantly--poof, all power immediately off. I was just running ActiveSync and I had connected/disconnected the BJ like 10 times before w/o problems, but for some reason (still unknown) this time after it was done and I unplugged the BJ (and to be precise, unplugged the USB cable from the BJ end), it just instantaneously powered down the laptop.

Now, it took me 15 mins, but letting it sit and finally removing the battery brought it back to life (power button and any other key combos to boot it did nothing) but that definitely scared the sh*t out of me! For reference I have an IBM T42 1.7Ghz and 1GB RAM from Feb 05, running WinXP all patched up and was using MS ActiveSync 4.2 (or the latest from Nov 24ish).

So I didn't connect the BJ to the laptop over USB again until I forgot a couple weeks later when I needed to charge the ever-draining battery (when I was at the corporate office actually). Again, as soon as I unplugged the BJ it killed the laptop instantly--and this time it no worky, AT ALL. Yep, the laptop wouldn't power back up, removing battery or not, chanting spells, sacrificing chickens--the whole nine yards.

So I gave it to our Dir of IT (yeah being at corporate!) and he and the whole team had it for 4 hrs and didn't bring it back quick, I knew something *BAD* had happened. Luckily for me, they just got the same model T42 and put the HD in it (which is what I'm using right now) and everything is pretty much the same. But I was afraid to plug the BJ in b/c of what it'd done and haven't connected it to my laptop since (let alone tried another machine like my desktop! :P).

Never heard/seen of anything like that though a friend of mine claimed it was a USB short--so anyone know anything about those?! Googling for that produced very few results. And, has anyone seen this kind of issue with their BJ or heard of someone else with a similar issue?!

So I got a new BJ yesterday b/c the keys were sticking on the other one; wonder if this new BJ will have the same issue or not...it is a new laptop body now though; the other one might've had a bad power connector though I'm not sure how that would've caused something plugged into USB to short the thing...and I've had a Blackberry plugged into the laptop many times before, and to be clear, I'd had the BJ plugged into the laptop a few times before it did it the first time, so...

Weird, huh? Any thoughts feedback on this strangeness much appreciated. Cheers, and Merry Christmas!


P.S. The Mgr of my corp Cing store in West LA has a BJ too and mentioned maybe hearing something about this from the SamSung rep and said he'd check with him...I'll update this if I get any info from him.


Posted by: jhruth

This exact same scenario happened at work. I unpluged the Blackjack and the whole PC just DIED ! My IT guy pulled my HD and put it into a new PC and I was all set to go... I think they had to replace the whole motherboard on it...

Not sure what caused it either, but it's pretty scary.....




Quote:
Originally Posted by keltraine
I just realized that I never actually posted about this in the multitude of other things I've been asking about since I got my BJ about a month ago...maybe it was a little ostrich syndrome since I love my BJ so much, but here goes as a warning for other folks, and to see if this is a more widespread problem, or just an unlucky one-off for me...

So I had the BJ twice kill my laptop. Once when I unplugged it it powered down the laptop instantly--poof, all power immediately off. I was just running ActiveSync and I had connected/disconnected the BJ like 10 times before w/o problems, but for some reason (still unknown) this time after it was done and I unplugged the BJ (and to be precise, unplugged the USB cable from the BJ end), it just instantaneously powered down the laptop.

Now, it took me 15 mins, but letting it sit and finally removing the battery brought it back to life (power button and any other key combos to boot it did nothing) but that definitely scared the sh*t out of me! For reference I have an IBM T42 1.7Ghz and 1GB RAM from Feb 05, running WinXP all patched up and was using MS ActiveSync 4.2 (or the latest from Nov 24ish).

So I didn't connect the BJ to the laptop over USB again until I forgot a couple weeks later when I needed to charge the ever-draining battery (when I was at the corporate office actually). Again, as soon as I unplugged the BJ it killed the laptop instantly--and this time it no worky, AT ALL. Yep, the laptop wouldn't power back up, removing battery or not, chanting spells, sacrificing chickens--the whole nine yards.

So I gave it to our Dir of IT (yeah being at corporate!) and he and the whole team had it for 4 hrs and didn't bring it back quick, I knew something *BAD* had happened. Luckily for me, they just got the same model T42 and put the HD in it (which is what I'm using right now) and everything is pretty much the same. But I was afraid to plug the BJ in b/c of what it'd done and haven't connected it to my laptop since (let alone tried another machine like my desktop! :P).

Never heard/seen of anything like that though a friend of mine claimed it was a USB short--so anyone know anything about those?! Googling for that produced very few results. And, has anyone seen this kind of issue with their BJ or heard of someone else with a similar issue?!

So I got a new BJ yesterday b/c the keys were sticking on the other one; wonder if this new BJ will have the same issue or not...it is a new laptop body now though; the other one might've had a bad power connector though I'm not sure how that would've caused something plugged into USB to short the thing...and I've had a Blackberry plugged into the laptop many times before, and to be clear, I'd had the BJ plugged into the laptop a few times before it did it the first time, so...

Weird, huh? Any thoughts feedback on this strangeness much appreciated. Cheers, and Merry Christmas!


P.S. The Mgr of my corp Cing store in West LA has a BJ too and mentioned maybe hearing something about this from the SamSung rep and said he'd check with him...I'll update this if I get any info from him.



Posted by: dmurray1414

Sounds like your USB was shorting out...that will cause exactly that.


Posted by: keltraine

Wow ok, I was getting worried b/c no one had replied to this, thinking it was just me. it's both comforting and scary to know that it's not!

So the question is is this likely to happen again or not?! I'm afraid to plug my new BJ into my new laptop, but it sounds like the problem is related to the PC itself right?

I did try googling but got precious few hits, so anyone got any more info or links to useful sites on this?! ANY info on this much appreciated; it's really got me running scared!


Posted by: Rcadden

yet another reason I have a bluetooth adapter on my pc.


Posted by: znutar

I've had USB lockups which necessitated rebooting, but no hardware failures.


Posted by: mbranscum

Wirelessly posted (Nokia 6620: SAMSUNG-SGH-I607/I607FG1 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows CE; Smartphone; 320x240) UP.Link/6.3.0.0.0)

Quote:
Originally Posted by dmurray1414
Sounds like your USB was shorting out...that will cause exactly that.


That's exactly what I was going to say.


Posted by: Playstation3

Quote:
Originally Posted by keltraine
I just realized that I never actually posted about this in the multitude of other things I've been asking about since I got my BJ about a month ago...maybe it was a little ostrich syndrome since I love my BJ so much, but here goes as a warning for other folks, and to see if this is a more widespread problem, or just an unlucky one-off for me...

So I had the BJ twice kill my laptop. Once when I unplugged it it powered down the laptop instantly--poof, all power immediately off. I was just running ActiveSync and I had connected/disconnected the BJ like 10 times before w/o problems, but for some reason (still unknown) this time after it was done and I unplugged the BJ (and to be precise, unplugged the USB cable from the BJ end), it just instantaneously powered down the laptop.

Now, it took me 15 mins, but letting it sit and finally removing the battery brought it back to life (power button and any other key combos to boot it did nothing) but that definitely scared the sh*t out of me! For reference I have an IBM T42 1.7Ghz and 1GB RAM from Feb 05, running WinXP all patched up and was using MS ActiveSync 4.2 (or the latest from Nov 24ish).

So I didn't connect the BJ to the laptop over USB again until I forgot a couple weeks later when I needed to charge the ever-draining battery (when I was at the corporate office actually). Again, as soon as I unplugged the BJ it killed the laptop instantly--and this time it no worky, AT ALL. Yep, the laptop wouldn't power back up, removing battery or not, chanting spells, sacrificing chickens--the whole nine yards.

So I gave it to our Dir of IT (yeah being at corporate!) and he and the whole team had it for 4 hrs and didn't bring it back quick, I knew something *BAD* had happened. Luckily for me, they just got the same model T42 and put the HD in it (which is what I'm using right now) and everything is pretty much the same. But I was afraid to plug the BJ in b/c of what it'd done and haven't connected it to my laptop since (let alone tried another machine like my desktop! :P).

Never heard/seen of anything like that though a friend of mine claimed it was a USB short--so anyone know anything about those?! Googling for that produced very few results. And, has anyone seen this kind of issue with their BJ or heard of someone else with a similar issue?!

So I got a new BJ yesterday b/c the keys were sticking on the other one; wonder if this new BJ will have the same issue or not...it is a new laptop body now though; the other one might've had a bad power connector though I'm not sure how that would've caused something plugged into USB to short the thing...and I've had a Blackberry plugged into the laptop many times before, and to be clear, I'd had the BJ plugged into the laptop a few times before it did it the first time, so...

Weird, huh? Any thoughts feedback on this strangeness much appreciated. Cheers, and Merry Christmas!


P.S. The Mgr of my corp Cing store in West LA has a BJ too and mentioned maybe hearing something about this from the SamSung rep and said he'd check with him...I'll update this if I get any info from him.


I don't have a Blackjack, but rather an 8525, so we're both on WM5. I have heard reports that ActiveSync 4.2 has caused problems like these. You are encouraged to upgrade to ActiveSync 4.5, which is still in beta, but works much better than 4.2 for many users. Go ahead and give it a shot and let us know how you made out.


Posted by: juiceppc

Our comapany had problems with the IBM usb ports and had the same symptons. It's not the BlackJack.


Posted by: graphiteRT

Quote:
Originally Posted by Playstation3
I don't have a Blackjack, but rather an 8525, so we're both on WM5. I have heard reports that ActiveSync 4.2 has caused problems like these. You are encouraged to upgrade to ActiveSync 4.5, which is still in beta, but works much better than 4.2 for many users. Go ahead and give it a shot and let us know how you made out.


So please humor us and explain how software will cause an electro-mechanical failure on a laptop.

This is the stuff that starts urban legends and it's pointless.


Posted by: beaups

exactly. there is NO way activesync could fry hardware in a computer.


Posted by: MilanoRex

I'm reading this in amazement.. I work in the IT department at a fairly large corperation and we use a lot of different smartphones here.. never heard of a phone killing a computer. I can't even imagine how Activesync(SOFTWARE) could cause a HARDWARE malfunction. Sounds like a coincidence or maybe a faulty USB board shorting out or something. Good luck though!


Posted by: Playstation3

Whooops...Didn't the the OP's post carefully enough. When I read laptop and ActiveSync, I was too quick on the trigger with thinking it was ActiveSync. ActiveSync 4.2 is known to have several issues, which is why I mentioned AS 4.5.

To the OP: I see you have a T42. Do you know if you still have warranty on your machine? I have an IBM Thinkpad T43 and my warranty is still good until 2009. Yours should still be good as well. Let me know if you need help with finding out if the warranty is still good and where to go with your system if need be.


Posted by: keltraine

Heh, coming back to this thread:

Thanks for the offer PS3; yeah I got the extended warranty which is good until mid-next year--now I just need to call and get the old T42 fixed. Fyi, I'm using a new T42 body with my old HD in it and that's been fine, and I started doing ActiveSync over USB a few days ago (finally) and no issues with the laptop--so it looks like the bad power connector on the other laptop must've caused the short over USB that fried it...

Strange, but that's the only thing I can think of. It's nice to be able to ActiveSync and install apps and edit stuff finally! So just be forwarned if you have any power issues that the BJ might cause you worse problems!




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