[SOLVED] I plugged in a 6V motor on the USB port of my Laptop and suddenly my laptop becomes turns off. After turning on, that USB doesn't work except on mouse

[Mithun_Ray]

I plugged in a 6V motor on the USB port of my Laptop and suddenly my laptop turns off. After turning on, that USB is no loger working except only the mouse.

I reinstalled the USB driver, disabled the suspended power setting in power setting option but nothing happens. What to do now?

 

[USAFRet]

It sounds like something is physically fried.

What "6v motor", and WHY?

 

[Paperdoc]

Yeah, both WHY? and HOW? A standard USB2 ports can supply power at 5 VDC up to a max of 0.5 A. It takes a very small motor to work that way, so I would not expect a device of any kind containing a motor to be wired to use a USB2 standard connection unless its current consumption is less than that. Or did OP rig up a custom connection?

 

[Karadjgne]

You just tried to Jumpstart a car from a cellphone, based on the fact it has a battery. And you wonder why the phone is dead.

Motors see startup spikes in amperage, takes a huge amount of power to break the static lack of energy and supplement it with momentum. Even a motor designed to run at 0.2A can pull as much as 5x that amount easily, depending on the weight of the load being moved.

And you plugged in a 6v motor to a 5v port rated for upto either 500mA USB2 or 900mA if it's USB3.

I'm surprised there's no further damage done than a burned out port.

 

[carocuore]

Hm, the scope of your engineering genius does knows bounds huh?

You have a motor that requires 6 volts and and a peak current of let's say 5A, your USB port not only has only 5 volts but also can only supply 10% of the current your motor needs.
This is why motor starters exist, to limit the amount of power it gets to them and mitigate spikes or inrush current (AC)

 

[Paperdoc]

Connecting such a load to a USB2 port makes no sense at all IF you understand the limits of that port. Maybe OP did not know all that. What intrigued me, though, is that making a connection to such a port requires a device fitted with an appropriate connector. Without that, you should not be able to make such a connection and overload the port - that is one way the port is protected. I do NOT expect that ANY device maker would fit that type of motor with a USB2 type A connector. So again, how was this accomplished? Was OP author of his/her own disaster?

 

[Karadjgne]

Not that hard, China makes doing such things rediculously easy now.
With this

Couple of wire nuts to the other side of that molex connector and you are in business for anything requiring power.

 

[Paperdoc]

Unfortunately true. It requires MIS-use of the adapter, BUT as you say that is easy! Reminds me of a similar mistake that bugs me: people who figure if it has 4 pins and you can push it together hard enough to stick then it all should work. Its IS a 4-pin connector, after all!

 

[Karadjgne]

Well the kicker is that you don't even need the molex. Many motors have pre-connected wiring, soldered to the housing, just a red and black wire. Not hard to snip off that molex and just tie black to black and the other, just 2 wires from that usb connector, 5v and ground. Could probably do that with the usb from a cell phone charge only cable too.

Either way it wasn't a well thought out plan, even if you didn't know the usb was only 5v and amperage weak, just assuming it's 12v like most things claim to be, hooked to a 6v motor would still be a disaster.

Somewhat lacking in sympathy here as I was raised to use the right tool for the job. A butter knife is a butter knife, not a screwdriver nor a pry-bar.