Smoking HP Chromebooks

[abognar_River17]

Has anybody else had issues with the HP Chromebook 11 G5 EE smoking and then not working?

I work for a school system in Northen Ohio and we recently purchased [6 months ago] about 3,000 HP Chromebooks from CDW.  In the last 3-4 months we have experienced this problem with at least 4  Chromebooks.  They will be conected to a power source ( a cart) and when the ChromeBook is connected to the power adapter, there is a puff of white smoke and then the ChromeBook will stop working.   Sometimes there is even melted plastic on the power port of the chromebook and the adapter end will be black or melted.

HP support has been replacing these under warranty, but our management is a bit concerned about a possible fire hazzard issue with them.

Anyone else having this issue?

Andy

[rick-s]

I have brought your issue to the attention of an appropriate team within HP. They will likely request information from you in order to look up your case details or product serial number. Please look for a private message from an identified HP contact. Additionally, keep in mind not to publicly post personal information (serial numbers and case details).

If you are unfamiliar with how the Forum's private message capability works, you can learn about that here.

Thank you for visiting the HP Support Forum.

[abognar_River17]

There is an open HP Case Number: [personal information removed] on this matter.

[LightsGuy]

I also work for an Ohio school district. We had a situation last week with one of our HP Chromebooks as well. We have the HP Chromebook 14 G4 model (Over 1200 of them). The teacher reported the device to be smoking. When we went to take a look, it had totally caught fire and melted the charger as well as the charging port. I instantly got onto a chat with HP support. Once they heard it had caught fire, they instantly told me to not perform any troubleshooting and to unplug the device (which we'd already done) I was told that someone from HP's Health and Safety team would be contacting me regarding the issue.  While this was an isolated situation, we're concerned that it may become a widespread issue in our fleet and schools. 

[danny-r]

@LightsGuy

I have brought your issue to the attention of an appropriate team within HP. They will likely request information from you in order to look up your case details or product serial number. Please look for a private message from an identified HP contact. Additionally, keep in mind not to publicly post personal information (serial numbers and case details).

If you are unfamiliar with how the Forum's private message capability works, you can learn about that here.

Thank you for visiting the HP Support Forum.

[abognar_River17]

Thank you for your response.

I may have discovered the cause of the issue.  There is a plastic center post in the ChromeBook charging port that sheilds the wires used in charging the battery.    On several of our ChromeBooks, that post has fallen out, causing charging issues and I could see it possibly shorting out the bare wires and causing the smoking issue I mentioned.

We have open cases right now with HP.

[LightsGuy]

We've seen several of these issues as well! Now that you've mentioned it, our concern is that many of our devices that this has happened to are out of warranty! 😞

[abognar_River17]

Our ChromeBooks are still under warranty but HP Support is condisdering the broken part inside the charging port as  "user damage" and chosing not to cover any repairs under the warranty.

[dp33]

We bought 125 HP Chromebook 11 G5 EE this year and have around 50 so far (in less than 8 months) with this same problem - the small plastic "post" in the chatging port has come out. There is now way this is user error as they are in carts and simply plug straight in and out.  Having the metal pins exposed now is VERY concerning as we have had at least one smoke as well, and others have now had the metal pins bend because the plastic "post" tha is suppossed to be covering thme has come out. 

[abognar_River17]

We purchased about 1,800 of them last summer and had the same issues - some sparked and smoked - some just had the posts break off. 

HP has been very good at repairing them under warranty, but our warranty has now expired so we have purchased the replacement power ports and are repairing them ourselves.