This morning I was trying to pull data off an old 2.5″ laptop ATA drive. I popped in a USB/Firewire enclosure and plugged it into my Mac. The Mac popped up a message saying it shut down that USB port because something was drawing too much power.

Silly me, I figured that maybe the Mac didn’t have enough juice and my wife’s Asus Windows laptop would, and what’s the worst that could possibly happen, maybe it would pop up a similar error and refuse to work.

Plugged it in. A few seconds later, the laptop powered down and now it refuses to power up with or without any USB stuff hooked up and with or with out the AC adapter plugged in. It seems dead as a door nail.

Seriously? Folks make laptops that don’t have any over-current protection? Apparently, Apple thought to include both hardware and software support for that condition. And this Asus laptop was not exactly a cheap laptop. And Asus generally has a good reputation I thought.

I thought maybe it just blew a fuse and I could replace it, but now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fuse in anything digital.

Aside from checking whether this laptop is under warranty, I have a feeling I’m pretty much screwed, but thought I’d throw it out there to see if there’s anything else I could try…