Q: I've just bought an HP laptop for my mother as a present; before giving it to her I decided to check to see if everything is okay and install an antivirus on it as well. the laptop was on for like an hour when I noticed the adaptor's got really really hot; this doesn't happen for the adaptor of my own laptop (it's a Dell) and I'm worried now that maybe the laptop I bought wasn't the best choice. is it dangerous that it gets very hot? specially regarding that it's a present and I don't want to use it and the fact that my mum lives abroad (so if something happens I won't have recourse to guarantee supports and stuff) should I be alarmed about the adaptor?
A: I would take it to someone who knows about laptop chargers and batterys. It could be that you have a defective battery and it is putting too much of a load on the charger. You could test this by taking the battery out of the laptop and just runnig the laptop on the charger only and see if it still gets hot. If it doesn't, you could have a bad battery.