Laptop crashes on power cord but not battery

My brother has a Dell Latitude C600 laptop. Recently he started experiencing blue screen memory dumps and crashes. The tech he had replaced the hard drive but it started crashing again.

Now he noticed something really strange. He ran it this morning on battery only and it ran fine for around 3 hours till the battery got down to about 65%. Then he plugged in the power cord and within 15 minutes BAMM it memory dumped and crashed.

He charged the battery and got it going again, just fine then plugged it in to the power again and BAMMM another blue screen memory dump and crash.

Is it possible there is something wrong with the power system causing this memory dump? It seems to illogical but, then, what do I know. He had a new fan installed and it is turning on and off properly it seems, so cooling shoujldn't be an issue.

I suggested he try a new proven good memory chip next but with this new info, I didn't know where else to turn and thought this might be something the experts are familar with.

Thanks

 

Thanks for that. I will pass it along.

 

It's possible that the problem is a CPU overheat. Most laptops slow down when on battery power, then go to full speed when plugged in(generating more heat).

 

I apologize for resurrecting a two-year old thread, but I am having this exact problem. I am using an Inspiron 1150 laptop, which is not included on Dell's list in the recall.

The laptop was working fine right up until the other day. Now if the power cord is plugged in Windows will throw up the blue screen of death and crash. However, running on battery alone is fine. I can charge the battery fine so long as the laptop is off. But the minute I plug it in, things go awry. Usually IE crashes with the "..has encountered an error" box. Then lockup, then BSOD.

Anyone else?

 

I recently started having this same issue. My Dell Inspiron E1705 laptp will crash when plugged in, but it never will when running on battery. When it crashes (I'm running Windows Vista), the screen shuts off and the laptop becomes unresponsive. I have to hold down the power button and force it to shut off.

If you all were able to find a solution, I'd love to know what you did to fix this issue--it's driving me insane.

 

one possible thing could be something fishy with your power management software....on my laptop, i know there is software (and hardware controlled by the bios) that controls things like screen brightness, and cpu speed. Do you use software provided from dell? or just the windows power mgmt software?

Another option could be what was mentioned above about overheating...since your cpu runs at it's fastest speed when it's plugged in, it could be just generating too much heat and causing the crash(es)