BN1250G, Windows 7 and PowerChute Personal

[Anonymous user]

Greetings,

I purchased the Back-UPS NS 1250 (model # BN1250G) from Sams Club back in October 2009. I had tried to install PowerChute Personal 2.2, but upon launch, I would be prompted with "APC PowerChute Personal Edition has stopped working". The software and driver installed properly. The system tray icon was working as well. If I went to Device Manager and disabled the APC Battery, the system tray icon would notify me that it can't communicate with the UPS. But I could never get PowerChute to launch and was unable to find any solutions here or throughout the web, so I resigned to uninstalling PowerChute and used Windows' native "battery management" and the OSD on the unit. From then until now, there were a few power outages and the BN1250G kept both the laptop and desktop running.

This morning, I woke up and noticed my alarm clock flashing 12:00, so I went to check on my systems. Surprisingly, the laptop that is connected to the UPS was still up and running, but the desktop had shut down. I found that the power outage this morning was short and lasted only a few minutes, so both systems should have remained up, but what was odd to me was that only one of the two machines shut down. So I did a manual test once both systems were online and idle at desktop. I pulled the plug from the wall and while the laptop continued without a hitch, the desktop machine shut down hard, instantly. So that's part 1 of my question. Why is only one machine shutting off? And why now? Both machines power state have survived outages while attached to this unit before, so what's changed? At the time I pulled the plug, with both machines idle, the total draw of power was ~234W. This is nowhere near overloaded for my particular unit and as well, it shows also on the OSD that I'd have 15 minutes of runtime. When the plug is pulled and the desktop instantly shuts down, that time changes to over 60 minutes, as now it is only powering the laptop.

I thought maybe I would try redownloading PowerChute and try again, but I am met with the same "stopped working" error. For what it's worth, I also tried unplugging the unit from the wall after PowerChute was installed, thinking maybe the APC driver would somehow handle or log this event better than Windows seemed to be doing, but it shuts down hard just the same. With no error logging from PowerChute and no other means to troubleshoot, I'm at a loss now. Question #2 is Why is PowerChute not loading?

If there is any other detail anyone needs from me, I'm more than happy to provide as much as I can. Thanks for your time.

[BillP]

The UPS itself is operating just fine when you unplug it from the wall, correct? What LEDs/beeping patterns do you notice when you pull the plug?

I haven't seen that particular issue with PowerChute before so I'm not sure what to tell you in that regard... But your computer turning off immediately has nothing to do with the software. What's more likely is your computer's power supply doesn't like either the transfer time of the UPS switching from utility to battery power or the type of power output when the unit is on battery (step-approximated sine wave vs. pure sine wave of typical utility power). Or a combination of the two.

Over time, your computer's power supply "breaks in" from use, and sometimes as they age they're less resilient in terms of these two variables. I've seen the same issue on another system, an HP computer, which worked fine for about a year or so on a Back-UPS but now powers off as soon as the UPS is unplugged from the wall. Of course the laptop is fine because it has its own battery anyway.

Assuming we figure out how to get the software working, you could try adjusting the sensitivity of the UPS - higher sensitivities have shorter transfer times - but it's also possible you may need a pure sine wave output when the unit is on battery, which is only available on the [Smart-UPS models|http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=165]. It seems this is becoming more and more common with newer, "better" power supplies that have higher demands...

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

Hi, thanks for the response.

This was over a decade ago. Eleven years and three months to be exact. I'm sorry my memory isn't what it used to be. I am still using that UPS but a subsequent version of PowerChute resolved the issue as I recall. I honestly would love to give more detail because getting a response after a decade+ is awesome. But I am unable to.

Thanks for taking time out of your day, though.