Civ V ruins my laptop charger

[i_diavolorosso]

Hard to believe eh?
It is, indeed. But it happens to me
My laptop, which is Acer 4530 (Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, AMD Turion X2 2.2 Ghz, 4 GB RAM, NVIDIA Geforce 9100) is having some kind of electrical troubleshoot lately. Yesterday, i bought a new Charger, as the old one, can't do her job anymore(which is charging my laptop of course )
At that point, i still have no suspicion that the death of my charger was because of any software related problem.

But today, i observe something very very strange, which make me to believe, that Civ V might be the one who kill my old charger.

I Play Civ V today, with my new charger plugged in. No problem so far. But right after i click the Begin Your Journey button, i notice some differences. My "Charging" lamp indicator on my laptop, in an all of sudden, was turned off. Please take in note, that no physical harassment , was done to the charger. The charger just stand right on where it is. The charger then "plug and unplugged" every few second. The indicator is turning on and off in every few second. What makes the problem more confusing is, from the opening movie to the loading screen, the charger was ok. The problem appearing only when i am officially in game. And when i closed Civ V everything went back to normal

Even more, i've been playing the game since the release date, the problem only arose from about a week or so

Anyone have any recommendation?

 

[The_J]

um...strange.
Is the batterie fully loaded at that time or not?

 

[Maniacal]

Send the charger back for replacement?

 

[i_diavolorosso]

@The_j

Yes it was

@princescamp

I'm planning on it.

Just curious, do you think there's any possibility that it could be a hardware problem? Because i played Warcraft, FM 2011, watched movies, do something else, and the problem didn't show up. It's only when i'm "officially" on game on ciV :-?

 

[The_J]

@The_j

Yes it was

As general advice: Never try to charge a accumulator, which is already full, that's not good for the hardware. Either unplug the charger or unplug the accumulator.
Okay, that doesn't have anything to do with the current problem, but it would be interesting to know if it goes away if you unplug one of both.

 

[timtofly]

Try taking the battery out. It may be the game, or it may just be coincidental. You may have to take the battery out and just leave it plugged into the outlet when playing the game. Or play until the battery dies and then plug it back into the outlet. Constant charging and uncharging will probably wear out the charger and/or the battery.

It is possible that the game cannot handle power issues, and the computer may think that the battery is constantly loosing power and needs to keep recharging itself.

 

[Atol]

When was the last time you Clean out your notebook. Basicly if you use the computer on your lap it might be overheating due to dust and such and might Affect another part of the computer like the Charger.

The other thing is Did you buy a Charger made for your notebook or did you buy a offbrand? That could also cause some issues.

 

[i_diavolorosso]

@The_J @timtofly

I've tried that. I removed my battery, and few seconds right after i'm in the game, the laptop turned off. Which means to me, that the charger was "plugging off" even though it wasn't
Btw, when i hovered on my battery icon, it said "Fully charged (100%) Consider replacing your battery". Then, when i use Batterymon, a battery's benchmark software, it said that my battery's designed capacity was 48840 mWh, while my full charge capacity is 17138 mWh.

Could it be a battery issue?

@atol

Actually it's been along time since i clean it up. I'll try that
The charger? No, it is an off brand. But i ever bought this charger once(the same off brand), for the same laptop, but there was no problem. Until it sudden death 'bout a week ago. Now i dare not to touch civ V. I'm afraid that this new charger will suffer the same fate as his predecessor

 

[The_J]

I've tried that. I removed my battery, and few seconds right after i'm in the game, the laptop turned off. Which means to me, that the charger was "plugging off" even though it wasn't
Btw, when i hovered on my battery icon, it said "Fully charged (100%) Consider replacing your battery". Then, when i use Batterymon, a battery's benchmark software, it said that my battery's designed capacity was 48840 mWh, while my full charge capacity is 17138 mWh.

Could it be a battery issue?

That's now damn strange.

First the easier thing, discrepancy between full and designed capacity. That's called memory effect. With every charging cycle, the battery loses capacity. That's due to the technology, and should only be a problem after a longer time. But if you are constantly charging/uncharing your battery, because you have the charger in while you use the laptop, that effect will increase. -> May i guess that the battery is not the newest one?

What does happen, when you only have the battery in and not the charger plugged in? Still something strange happening?

 

[timtofly]

It sounds to me like the "Power Supply" in the laptop itself me be damaged. It still could be something overheating and the computer will protect itself by turning off. I would try to get the computer as "chilled" as possible and once again try without the battery. If it stays on when cold, then it was just a heat issue. If it turns off when chilled, then there is somthing wrong internally which may have led to the damage of the original power supply. This may still be related to CIV5 though. It seems to cause the circuits to really heat up much more so, than normal usage.

 

[i_diavolorosso]

Ok, i play Civ V without charging right now

No problem so far. Except one that was unnoticed before.
There's a constant appearing of "USB device is not recognized" popping around
Now, when i remembered it correctly, it happens in a more frequent time when the charger is on. Complete with that "plugged and unplugged sound"

Now this is getting weirder. I have no usb device plugged in right now. Except.....the charger. And even when the charger is off, the message keeps appearing, only on a less frequent time.

And when i closed Civ V, those messages disappeared --a

Could it be a power supply issue, because i'm sure it happened too, on the very few last day of my last charger(which die now)

 

[The_J]

It's imho rather an issue with the windows installation, where something is borked.
Some programms can have strange side effects, e.g. when i use my pdf converter, my office always wants to reinstall and i have no idea why. Could be somehow the same case here, where some conflict could exist between the drivers, but i guess there's no real possibility how we could figure that out here .

 

[timtofly]

It could be as simple as "this game requires a loootttt of power".

When the newer graphics cards of the last 8 years came out, people were also required to upgrade the power supplies to handle them. This game's buggy code is pushing the limits of the graphics cards, which in turn, is pushing the limits of the power supply. While your system as a whole can handle the game, the power supply portion may not be able too.

 

[Geek113377]

I'm going to agree with timtofly about the game just using so much power that it burns out your charger.