1 I think it means that the hamster is complaining instead of running inside the wheel, hence no power is being generated to charge your notebook.

2 The squeaking may be an overloaded switching power supply, overloaded because it's trying to work into a short circuit, possibly a faulty capacitor that's become a resistor in its old age, or a battery pack that has shorted. The sound is audible because under excessive load the operating frequency of a switching power supply drops down into the human audible range. In normal operation the power supply switches at > 20 KHz (some > 80 KHz). This allows smaller, lighter, cheaper transformers, chokes, and capacitors to be used versus the huge iron boatanchor components in line-frequency power supplies. My response presumes that your question is serious, and that you didn't already know about switching power supplies.

3 Or, you might have a leak in your battery. That happened to a guy's laptop at a consulting company where I worked (though it was a long while ago and I would think batteries have gotten better/safer). If you're in the next room and you hear an explosion (from the build-up of leaking hydrogen), that was probably it. On the other hand, if it stops squeaking and starts to smell funny then the hamster is probably dead.

4 Tim - yeah, I guessed something along those lines. I didn't know the switching frequency was that high, though. Fortunately it turned out that it's something in the power supply that failed. It was expensive to replace, but cheaper than getting the notebook fixed.

5 Pixi the Jawa report is activn funny coment boxes not working. On M if I view a comment it says entry does not exeist when referencing which post the comment belongs to. Also got a "fruitcake err". I was sighned on to M wnd downstairs and came back. it was hung trying to sign ack on it said "furitcakee err too many connections. Strange strange. Just thoouhgt I shoukld let you know. the home page looks OK. I'll email Rusty too.

6 Sorry! The database disk filled up (see here for more details). I've cleared it out now and everything should be working again.

7 Pixy, have you noticed we haven't seen Boo in a long while?

8 I found a patch recently that makes him a playable character. :)

9 Ooh! Death By Boo!

10 Aha! There was a partial short in the power connector on the notebook if you pushed the plug in too hard. Once I fixed that, it started working again. Now I have two power supplies. :)