I recently had someone ask me about flea power, or electrostatic discharge. I thought it might be useful for some to go over what it is, and how to drain it. This little procedure can be the magic touch that gets a piece of hardware up and working again.
So first, what is flea power in computer equipment?
Flea power is the residual static electricity that remains on electrical components (like the capacitors on a motherboard, for example) the computer even after it has been powered off, even if a battery has been removed.
What symptoms are typical?
This gets a little tricky. I’ve personally seen issues where a server refuses to power on. A good rule of thumb is, if you can power the server down to troubleshoot any issue with any component, a flea drain may help you resolve issues with bad power causing inconsistencies with the components.
Now, how do we fix it?
This part’s easy. Enterprise components are designed to remain powered on 24/7 but when you face an issue, a Reset of your device can make things work. There are 3 levels of Reset, all defined below. In order, you should try to …