AC adapter in use?
If you see a puff of smoke or smell a burning odor and the AD adapter is in use, you should unplug it immediately if you can. I’ve burnt my fingers on short circuited wires more than once, so exercise extreme caution. When there’s a risk of fire, as documented in laptops with defective batteries like toshiba pa3383u-1brs, your first priority should be guarding against an outbreak of fire, not worrying about the laptop condition or studying this flowchart. Some people will immediately call the fire department or grab the fire extinguisher at the first sign of smoke in electronics, I’m more of a “move it outside” type, but again, I’ve been burned doing it. If there are flames coming out of the laptop, it’s history, so the fire extinguisher or fire department are the way to go. If it’s just the odor of smoke, unplugging the AC may preserve a laptop battery like pa3383u-1brs that can be reasonably repaired.
Troubleshooting the cause of the smoke, unless you just poured your coffee on the keyboard, requires taking the laptop apart and visually inspecting the components down to the board level. If the laptop battery like toshiba pa3384u-1bas at all hot, wait for it to cool before attempting dissembly. Always remove the battery pack such as toshiba pa3356u-1brs before opening up a laptop. Since component spacing in laptops is so tight, you’ll rarely get lucky enough to zero in on the problem with your sense of smell, which is sometimes effective with larger desktop computer components. Inspect the circuit boards, connectors, remove and inspect the drives. Pay special attention to electrolytic capacitors and discrete power semiconductors, usually located very near the power input. If you find a burnt spot or signs of melting on a discrete component, such as a hard drive, dvd drive, capacitor or power semiconductor, there’s a reasonable chance that the failure was internal to that component and that replacing it will fix the problem. If there’s a large burnt or melted spot on the main circuit board, the notebook is probably toast, it’s rarely cost effective to even attempt a replacement.
If the problem was a hot plastic odor and you can’t find any signs of damage during your visual inspection, it’s possible that the laptop battery such as toshiba pa3356u-1bas was overheating and you caught it in time. Some people are more sensitive than others to plastic odors, and there is always the possibility that a little foreign matter, food or insect, found it’s way into the notebook and got incinerated. Read over the procedures for troubleshooting laptop battery e.g. pa3291u-1brs overheating, as if you never encountered the burnt odor, to make sure the notebook wasn’t operated in such a way that it was being encouraged to battery e.g. pa2487ur overheat, check the fans and the vents.
