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Update: All of the electrical wirings in our house have been replaced and the issue has been fixed. Thanks, everyone.

Update: We unplugged the fridge and the TV and tried to charge the laptop again using the 45W charger, and the laptop started charging okay. Looks like this could really be an issue with our wirings. Will try to post an update after repair job is finished.

Another update: Just a few minutes ago, when we tried to charge the other laptop again with the 45W charger (plugged into a power strip), our lights also started to flicker and the fans turned off.

I didn't mention this above but yesterday (before the electrician came and we had that one outlet replaced), even when the 200W laptop charger wasnt plugged in, we kept experiencing brief power interruptions that would only last a couple of seconds where the power would quickly go off and on. Probably 30mins-45mins interval? We took a wild guess and turned off my UPS (didnt unplug). Somehow our power remained stable after that. Could the laptop charger have really screwed something in our wiring to cause that issue? Edit: We did have an incident sometime last week where a fluorescent lamp suddenly burst when it was turned on (it was in our yard but still connected to our house). I don't know how old that light was exactly, but I think at least a couple of years old. It has been replaced and that light seems to still be working fine since. Not really sure if that's indicative of a wiring issue though.

Just posting an update here in case anyone experiences the same thing. Issue got worse and I couldn't plug the charger into the third wall outlet at all anymore without causing our power to fluctuate. We had one of the three wall outlets replaced. Plugged in the UPS (27" monitor + ~300W PC plugged into it) into that new wall outlet, no issue. Plugged in the 200W laptop charger, power fluctuated (lights flickering, fans turning off) and it took much longer to stabilize again after unplugging the charger, about a minute or so. Unplugged both UPS and charger. Tried plugging in just the UPS again, it now also causes the power to fluctuate, but we can safely plug in an electric fan into the new wall outlet. Contractor electrician said we will need to have all of our electrical wirings replaced (also probably long due since apparently when the house was built older/substandard wires were used). We still don't know yet if the laptop charger is defective. We have another laptop that gets charged just fine, but the charger is only 45W.

Great, thanks!

Thanks for the tip, I'll try to ask someone to check the volts coming into the power strips. The charger being bad is also a possibility, I'll see if I can have someone from our IT department check it. I also don't know if this has any impact on the issue but we've been experiencing bad weather for the past 2 days, and we experienced a brief power outage yesterday as well as the day before that. A friend said perhaps we're having low voltage issues and that it may be worth to try reaching out to the power distribution company?

I'm not 100% sure if all the lights in the house are affected, but I can at least say for sure that the lights in two bedrooms, the living room, and dining room are affected. One power strip is in bedroom 1 and the other power strip is in the living room. Plugging the laptop charger into either causes the lights in all of those mentioned rooms above to flicker. My UPS is in my bedroom, and even when I plug the charger into the power strip in the living room, the UPS goes on battery mode. No other appliances were plugged into that power strip. Only one fan is plugged into the other power strip in my bedroom and plugging the charger into it still also causes the lights to flicker. It's just weird that it's happening now when I have been plugging into either of those power strips for 2 years with the same laptop and charger with no issue.

Laptop model: HP ZBook 17 G5 A sudden issue occurred where when I plug my laptop charger (not connected to the laptop yet) into a power strip, our house lights flicker and it even triggers the battery mode in my UPS. I tested this on two different power strips plugged into two different wall outlets and the issue persists. Both power strips have surge protection, both about about 2 years old. What seems to work is when I plug the laptop charger directly into the wall outlet (a third wall outlet, separate from the two other wall outlets where the two power strips are plugged in). Is this an issue with the charger or something else?

I have two accounts on my PC, the admin one which is tied to my outlook account (uses a PIN for login), and another local account (no outlook account, uses normal password). Lately, what seems to happen is that, for example, I'm using the local account, if my PC is shut down without signing out of that account first, the next time it turns on and I try to sign into the other account (which is the admin account), the taskbar is unresponsive. When I click on the taskbar, the screen quickly blinks/refreshes, but it's not launching any programs. Start menu doesn't work. Restarting Windows Explorer doesn't fix it. What fixes the problem is if I sign out of admin account > sign into the other local account (which was the last used account before previous shutdown) > sign out of that account > sign back into admin account > everything is working fine now. This also happens vice versa, if I shut down the PC using admin account without signing out first. The other day it happened again after I tried to sign into the local account (admin account was the last logged in account before shutdown). I signed out of local, signed into and out of admin, signed back into local account, but this time it showed me a "Let's finish setting up your device" screen where there is a "Remind me in 3 days" option. That has also appeared at least once before with the admin account. Has anyone encountered this?

Windows 10 Pro Ryzen 5 3600 16GB Trident Z Neo 3600 B550-F Gaming Wifi Seasonic Focus GX 750 Gold FM Gigabyte GTX 1650 Super APC EasyUPS 1000VA I built my PC in the 1st week of January this year, all parts were brand new. I started encountering this problem I think in the second week of February. This has happened about 3 times now. 1. I press Win + L and leave my desk for a few minutes. 2. When I log back in, I find out my PC has restarted - I need to relaunch everything. I use my PC every day, I have never encountered BSOD since I built it. These "random" reboots only seem to happen when lock screen is active. Looked through the Events Viewer, these are the things that jumped out at me for the most recent "random" reboot: - The previous system shutdown at 6:21:27 pm on ‎11/‎03/‎2021 was unexpected. - The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly. - The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x0000000a (0xffffdd8100007ec8, 0x00000000000000ff, 0x000000000000005c, 0xfffff8032ac06b1c). A dump was saved in: C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP. I did a Malwarebytes scan, didn't detect anything.

Got it. Thank you!

I see, thank you for the reply. I did not hear any beeps or tones at all, just that steady, low buzzing sound that lasted for a few minutes. I plugged my PC and monitor back in now and have turned the UPS back on and everything seems to be working fine, the low buzzing sound is gone. I don't really know what could have trigged it since we haven't had any power outages recently. And if it was operating on battery, I would have heard at least 4 beeps but I didn't, I was in my room before and when the buzzing noise started. Maybe it was the voltage regulation, but that's just a wild guess, lol. On the box, it says it has Automatic Diagnostic Testing, "bi-weekly testing of all internal components, including the battery, ensures your Easy UPS is ready when you need it." There's really no description of what happens during that dx testing, but I'm guessing (from the other comment) that that could also cause the UPS to buzz.

Oooh, thanks for the reply, I didn't know that. On the box it says that it has Automatic Diagnostic Testing, "bi-weekly testing of all internal components, including the battery, ensures your Easy UPS is ready when you need it." So I'm guessing maybe that could be it?

I have an APC EasyUPS 1000VA. My PC (~300W) and 27" monitor were plugged into it. Out of nowhere I heard a steady/constant low buzzing sound coming from the UPS. It was pretty quiet in my room so it was noticeable. The LED light on the power button was steadily on, but I panicked so I quickly shut down my PC and unplugged it + monitor from the UPS. No beeps, just a low buzzing/humming sound. The buzzing sound lasted for about 5 minutes? And then stopped. We haven't had a power outage since I plugged it into the wall socket. I've had it plugged in for about 2 days now? Is this normal? Edit: It's a brand new UPS, bought earlier this month.