Old Lenovo Y410P suddenly dies out of the blue shortly after running a moderately intensive program

[D13H4RD]

So this was a majorly weird moment.

 

Because I needed a moderately powerful PC to help me weather through my wait for the RTX 2070 Super to go into my tower, I dusted off my old Lenovo Y410P and got most of my stuff onto it. However, just now, shortly after starting The Crew 2, the laptop had suddenly blanked out and almost literally died. No warning signs or the like were given before it happened. It just....died.

 

I had initially suspected a faulty charger, but what added to the weirdness of the situation was that the charger's LED illuminated when it is not connected to the laptop but then extinguished the moment it is connected. Usually, the LED would illuminate so as long as it received power, regardless if the laptop's battery was fully charged or not.

 

Short of pulling the CMOS battery, I tried to do the old "remove battery and hold power button for half a minute to a minute" to see if it had an effect. No dice. The Y410P's CMOS battery is a pain to get to, but before I do so, anyone have any idea on why exactly a laptop would just die out of the blue like so? It's just incredibly odd.

 

UPDATE: After a few more of that "remove battery and hold power button for half a minute to a minute" runs along with some finesse of manipulating the power supply, it did manage to turn back on but I had to turn it back off immediately because I heard what sounded like a "pop" or "arc" when the laptop started being fed power from the charger and shortly after, exhausted air that smelt like something had burnt up quite badly there.

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

I think your first instinct might be correct here. I had similar behavior from a faulty charger that died on me a while back. The light would go off when plugged into the device. I think it was short circuit protection being tripped. I also smelled some ozone and heard an arc. In my case, replacing the charger did the trick.

[D13H4RD]

6 minutes ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

I think your first instinct might be correct here. I had similar behavior from a faulty charger that died on me a while back. The light would go off when plugged into the device. I think it was short circuit protection being tripped. I also smelled some ozone and heard an arc. In my case, replacing the charger did the trick.

You might be right there. However, the burnt fumes came from the laptop's exhaust, so I'm a bit anxious over whether anything inside has been damaged. 

 

I won't know for sure until I open it up 

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

Burnt fumes coming from the exhaust of your laptop is generally considered a bad sign. Fingers crossed for you.

[D13H4RD]

1 minute ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

Burnt fumes coming from the exhaust of your laptop is generally considered a bad sign. Fingers crossed for you.

Yeah, that's my worry there. It did continue to work at least for a bit but the continuous exhausting of burnt fumes plus odd sounds just made me switch it off immediately and disconnecting the battery. 

 

I'm now suspecting a short circuit in the laptop itself after reading up because I had noticed that the LED on the charger didn't completely extinguish but was struggling to properly illuminate, sometimes flickering, only disappearing when disconnected from the laptop.