I have an Acer Aspire 4520. The other night the power supply starting acting nuts, the screen began flashes and then I noticed smoke coming from where the power supply was plugged in. I quickly unplugged it and shut down. I couldn't get it to power up after that, either with the battery (which was good), or with the power supply.
Yesterday my wife found my old power supply so I plugged it in and the laptop starts up and works fine. It now says "3% (plugged in, charging)" but it is not. It originally said 8%. Then 5%, 4%, and now 3%.
The bars are not going up on the battery on screen either. If I pull the battery out and then put it back in it the bars will move as if it is charging for about 1 minute and then stop. I have also tried my old battery, same deal.
The LED lights on both, the charger and the laptop also show as if the PC is charging. If I unplug the PC it immediately shuts down (and I don't mean "shut down" as in closing out of windows and shutting down, I mean like the battery dropped dead and you hope your info was saved).
I've tried uninstalling the battery through the device manager, which hasn't worked because it says "must restart to finish" but when I restart it is still there. I've also tried unplugging the PC, pulling the battery, and holding the power button. So far nothing has worked.
Any ideas? Is it the BIOS, software, or hardware? It is running Windows Vista, FYI. Thanks.
