Is a foreign adapter frying my MBP?

[jamesdunn310]

Hey all. I'm an American currently in Namibia. I have a Macbook Pro unibody, with I think OS X 10.6.1. I bought a converter which I plug my Magsafe into so I can access the round two-pin wall jacks they use out here.

Since then, three things have happened. My MBP gets way hotter than it ever did. I get small electric shocks regularly - never happened in America. And last week I got the grey question-mark folder of death when I tried to log on. An OS reinstall got my laptop working... for a day, then it died again.

Consensus is, the hard drive died, or the HDD cable. Getting it fixed seems straightforward enough, but I don't want to get it fixed just so it can happen again. Do you guys think an overload of power might have caused this? If so, what can I do about it?


Thanks in advance...

 

[justperry]

Hey all. I'm an American currently in Namibia. I have a Macbook Pro unibody, with I think OS X 10.6.1. I bought a converter which I plug my Magsafe into so I can access the round two-pin wall jacks they use out here.

Since then, three things have happened. My MBP gets way hotter than it ever did. I get small electric shocks regularly - never happened in America. And last week I got the grey question-mark folder of death when I tried to log on. An OS reinstall got my laptop working... for a day, then it died again.

Consensus is, the hard drive died, or the HDD cable. Getting it fixed seems straightforward enough, but I don't want to get it fixed just so it can happen again. Do you guys think an overload of power might have caused this? If so, what can I do about it?


Thanks in advance...

No, and the reason why is that your Power Adapter which came with your machine can be used all around the world.
They can take any Voltage from about ~100 to 240 Volts.

The adapter you have is a normal converter I guess, it is just converting the pins to different pins?

What can sometimes be a problem are spikes on the Power, many times it isn't that reliable in countries like these.
I myself am in Indonesia and sometimes there are similar problems here.

Edit: The electrical shocks won't kill you, it's common in countries where there wire which should be 0 Volts is not connected to the ground and it is not 0 Volts, I have the same here, and although it is not dangerous it can be annoying.

 

[GermanyChris]

I've used converters on all my stuff since moving to Europe in 2005

 

[jamesdunn310]

hey there, thanks for your reply.

I didn't think the shocks were dangerous to me. It just all seems like common sense - the laptop's extremely hot, I'm getting shocks, then the hard drive dies. As hot as the laptop has been, it's hard to imagine how the hard drive could survive it.

I forgot to mention when I reinstalled the OS, the MBP gives me the Service Battery notification when I click on battery status.

 

[justperry]

hey there, thanks for your reply.

I didn't think the shocks were dangerous to me. It just all seems like common sense - the laptop's extremely hot, I'm getting shocks, then the hard drive dies. As hot as the laptop has been, it's hard to imagine how the hard drive could survive it.

I forgot to mention when I reinstalled the OS, the MBP gives me the Service Battery notification when I click on battery status.

You know, you are probably in a very hot climate, it is normal a laptop is hotter when the outside temperature is about 10-20 degrees Celsius more than where you normally live.
Tip, I bought a small fan, if you are mostly in one place buy a cheap(chinese) 4"-10cm fan and put it next to the laptop pointing towards the keyboard, it makes it much cooler.

If you are staying there for a long time and in the same place you should think about grounding the 0 Volt wire.