My iBook is shocking me, then turning itself off.

[Ice]

Hello everyone.

Haven't posted in months but still have been lurking the boards.

Anyway, my iBook (iBook G4 1ghz 14") is pretty much constantly plugged into the wall with the adapter, and I hardly ever turn it off (mostly close the screen leave it in sleep when I'm not using it)...

A couple of days ago I went to open the screen by pressing the silverish release button, and I felt a slight shock. It was really minor, I thought maybe my finger had some static electricity on it or something, so I didn't give it much thought. I continued to open the screen, and when it was all the way open, instead of turning on to reveal a picture of my desktop, it sat there blank. My USB mouse also lost it's power (light went off). I panicked, thinking my iBook was dead -- then I fiddled with the power button and after pressing it a few times, managed to turn the iBook back on, and all was well.

...Until this afternoon, when I once again went to open my iBook's screen, and once again felt a small shock. Turns out whatever is going on is killing the power to my iBook, as the screen was dead once again and I had to push the power button a few times to get it to turn back on.

So now I'm thinking there's some sort of problem.

Just so there's no confusion, I've never opened up my iBook to fiddle with anything, aside from installing a stick of RAM and my Airport Extreme card. And the problem started occuring yesterday, long after I'd done either.

I figure whatever needs to be done will be covered by AppleCare, which I purchased at the time of buying my iBook.

I was just curious as to what the experts of the board would advise I do first -- call up AppleCare directly or try to have it checked out at an Apple Store. I just don't know if this is the type of thing that will leave me iBook-less for a couple of weeks (bad) or if it's an easy thing to fix. Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[Peterkro]

Ice, there is another thread on here about this.It only gives general advice but may be worth a look(just do a search).At least you know your not the only one with this problem and it seems to do no lasting damage.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/110559/
There's at least one otther but they cover same ground.

 

[jsw]

Sorry you're having a problem.

Before you do anything else, I strongly advise backing up to CD or elsewhere anything important to you, including email, bookmarks, and iTunes purchased music (and, of course, a lot of other files).

Then, I'd call Apple to see what they say.

If you need to either send in your iBook or bring it to an Apple Store, I strongly advise de-authorizing it within iTunes (if you use iTMS) first, and I'd send/bring it in with the assumption that they will wipe your hard disk. Of course, they very likely won't, but it isn't a bad idea to assume that they will, so you'll be prepared - it often happens.

It might be a simple little short, easily fixed. Hopefully, that's the case.

 

[yellow]

Completely non-helpful..

i KNEW that Taser USB dongle would cause problems!

 

[superbovine]

You using the 3 pronge power plug rather than the two. That will probably stop the shocking effect if the problem is static electrical charge.