How to test a laptop power adapter

What happens when your laptop just isn’t working properly. The batter doesn’t seem to charge as fast or the machine just won’t turn on at all. These are signs that your power adapter could be on the fritz. How do you go about testing your laptop power adapter to make sure that it is give out enough Voltz?

What you need

You will need to be in the possession of a “volt meter” and the laptop power adapter.

1. You will need to find out what the Voltage of the power adapter is. In my case it is 19.5V
2. Now that you know how many V’s it needs to output you now have to select the proper setting on the Volt Meter. Set it to 20V since it is close enough to 19.5V
3. Put the Black probe on the outside of the power tip.
4. Put the Red probe on the inside so that it is touching the inside wall of the tip.
5. You should see it reach something like 19.4, 19.3, 19.5-ish.
6. Since the number matches the requirements we know the adapter is working up to it’s full potential.

 

See below for a picture tutorial:

 

Tags: How To

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 12:12 am and is filed under Computer Hardware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.