Do I need a new UPS?

[Anonymous user]

I bought an APC Back-UPS LS 500 about 4-5 years ago that until recently has been serving me flawlessly.

In 2008-11 my battery died, so I bought a new replacement battery from Newegg on 2008-11-09.

My UPS then continued to work flawlessly for the next several months.

But about a month or two ago, some new symptoms developed. I would frequently thoughout the day see a dialog popup telling me that my UPS had been disconnected (my UPS is connected to my PC via USB, so its status can be monitored and reported to the PC). This would be followed in seconds by another dialog saying that it had been reconnected. Does anyone know what is going on here? Is it normal for an APC UPS to disconnect and reconnect like this? Interestingly, in Powerchute, I changed my Runtime option from "Keep my computer on as long as possible" back to "Preserve battery power" a couple of days ago, and this seems to have dramatically reduced (eliminated entirely?) these reconnect dialogs. Does this make sense?

Next, several weeks ago, I had a power event during the night. I know this because my PC runs every night doing various batch processes (e.g. backup to a remote server), and when I looked at my PC in the morning, it was powered down. I restarted it, and windows resumed from hibernation. I opened up PowerChute, and it said that an overvoltage event had occurred.

Looking at Powerchute right now, it says that in the last 24 weeks I have had 5 overvoltage events for a total of 9 minutes and 54 seconds. It does not say what the overvoltage was, but I presume that it must be > 130 V because that is the max voltage that my UPS will tolerate before intervening. (Boy, the event logs provided by the personal edition of Powerchute are so lame--so lacking in detail!)

In the last week, I have had two more such voltage events which shutdown my PC at night. The one two days ago on 2009-05-28 happened soon after I went to bed, around 1:30 am, while last night's on 2009-05-30 happened at 5 am. I woke up because my UPS was constantly emitting a loud sound, even tho I had earlier in Powerchute checked "Disable battery backup alarms" from 20:00 (8 pm) to 08:00 (8 am). How come the alarm came on and woke me up? This is extremely annoying, and has left me tired all day long now.

At 5 am I could not initially eliminate the alarm by hitting the Off button so I actually unplugged the whole darn unit. I may have simply not been hitting the Off button right due to sleep exhaustion. But later this morning, after I plugged my UPS back in, it would not immediately start up. But now it has, altho I am not drawing power from it anymore (am bypassing it and going straight to a passive surge protector power strip).

Is my UPS going down and should I replace it, or is there something else that I can look into first?

Any feedback that you have is much appreciated!

[Erasmus_apc]

SpacemanSpiff wrote:

But about a month or two ago, some new symptoms developed. I would frequently thoughout the day see a dialog popup telling me that my UPS had been disconnected (my UPS is connected to my PC via USB, so its status can be monitored and reported to the PC). This would be followed in seconds by another dialog saying that it had been reconnected. Does anyone know what is going on here? Is it normal for an APC UPS to disconnect and reconnect like this? Interestingly, in Powerchute, I changed my Runtime option from "Keep my computer on as long as possible" back to "Preserve battery power" a couple of days ago, and this seems to have dramatically reduced (eliminated entirely?) these reconnect dialogs. Does this make sense?

Sometimes our UPS' will lose USB communication briefly for various reasons. One could be another piece of software trying to poll or read off the USB port, or a populated USB hub causing a brief blip, or cable that was knocked around and loosened somewhat, and sometimes users who have a lot of USB devices on their computer seem to have a loss of comm for reasons that are sometimes hard to piece together (when a printer is activated or a USB drive is inserted). It also, of course, is possible that a fault on the UPS' comm board/port can cause this issue.

SpacemanSpiff wrote:

Next, several weeks ago, I had a power event during the night. I know this because my PC runs every night doing various batch processes (e.g. backup to a remote server), and when I looked at my PC in the morning, it was powered down. I restarted it, and windows resumed from hibernation. I opened up PowerChute, and it said that an overvoltage event had occurred.

Looking at Powerchute right now, it says that in the last 24 weeks I have had 5 overvoltage events for a total of 9 minutes and 54 seconds. It does not say what the overvoltage was, but I presume that it must be > 130 V because that is the max voltage that my UPS will tolerate before intervening. (Boy, the event logs provided by the personal edition of Powerchute are so lame--so lacking in detail!)

In the last week, I have had two more such voltage events which shutdown my PC at night. The one two days ago on 2009-05-28 happened soon after I went to bed, around 1:30 am, while last night's on 2009-05-30 happened at 5 am. I woke up because my UPS was constantly emitting a loud sound, even tho I had earlier in Powerchute checked "Disable battery backup alarms" from 20:00 (8 pm) to 08:00 (8 am). How come the alarm came on and woke me up? This is extremely annoying, and has left me tired all day long now.

Can you describe the loud sound the UPS was emitting and what, if any LEDs that were active or off on the unit?

SpacemanSpiff wrote:

At 5 am I could not initially eliminate the alarm by hitting the Off button so I actually unplugged the whole darn unit. I may have simply not been hitting the Off button right due to sleep exhaustion. But later this morning, after I plugged my UPS back in, it would not immediately start up. But now it has, altho I am not drawing power from it anymore (am bypassing it and going straight to a passive surge protector power strip).

Is my UPS going down and should I replace it, or is there something else that I can look into first?

Any feedback that you have is much appreciated!

So the UPS would not start up immediately by hitting the power button, but it would turn on after you removed load from it? What kinds of load/devices do you have typically on the UPS? Also, when you ordered the new battery from Newegg, was it an official APC RBC?

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

Thanks much for replying.

Erasmus wrote:

SpacemanSpiff wrote:

But about a month or two ago, some new symptoms developed. I would frequently thoughout the day see a dialog popup telling me that my UPS had been disconnected (my UPS is connected to my PC via USB, so its status can be monitored and reported to the PC). This would be followed in seconds by another dialog saying that it had been reconnected. Does anyone know what is going on here? Is it normal for an APC UPS to disconnect and reconnect like this? Interestingly, in Powerchute, I changed my Runtime option from "Keep my computer on as long as possible" back to "Preserve battery power" a couple of days ago, and this seems to have dramatically reduced (eliminated entirely?) these reconnect dialogs. Does this make sense?

Sometimes our UPS' will lose USB communication briefly for various reasons. One could be another piece of software trying to poll or read off the USB port, or a populated USB hub causing a brief blip, or cable that was knocked around and loosened somewhat, and sometimes users who have a lot of USB devices on their computer seem to have a loss of comm for reasons that are sometimes hard to piece together (when a printer is activated or a USB drive is inserted). It also, of course, is possible that a fault on the UPS' comm board/port can cause this issue.

Hmm, the only other USB device on my PC at that moment was a flash drive plugged into the front, while the UPS USB cable goes into the back of the PC, so I think that this is in the mysterious category.

Erasmus wrote:

SpacemanSpiff wrote:

Next, several weeks ago, I had a power event during the night. I know this because my PC runs every night doing various batch processes (e.g. backup to a remote server), and when I looked at my PC in the morning, it was powered down. I restarted it, and windows resumed from hibernation. I opened up PowerChute, and it said that an overvoltage event had occurred.

Looking at Powerchute right now, it says that in the last 24 weeks I have had 5 overvoltage events for a total of 9 minutes and 54 seconds. It does not say what the overvoltage was, but I presume that it must be > 130 V because that is the max voltage that my UPS will tolerate before intervening. (Boy, the event logs provided by the personal edition of Powerchute are so lame--so lacking in detail!)

In the last week, I have had two more such voltage events which shutdown my PC at night. The one two days ago on 2009-05-28 happened soon after I went to bed, around 1:30 am, while last night's on 2009-05-30 happened at 5 am. I woke up because my UPS was constantly emitting a loud sound, even tho I had earlier in Powerchute checked "Disable battery backup alarms" from 20:00 (8 pm) to 08:00 (8 am). How come the alarm came on and woke me up? This is extremely annoying, and has left me tired all day long now.

Can you describe the loud sound the UPS was emitting and what, if any LEDs that were active or off on the unit?

The load noise was a constant tone. I cannot remember what LEDs were active or not; it was 5 am and I was half dead!

Erasmus wrote:

SpacemanSpiff wrote:

At 5 am I could not initially eliminate the alarm by hitting the Off button so I actually unplugged the whole darn unit. I may have simply not been hitting the Off button right due to sleep exhaustion. But later this morning, after I plugged my UPS back in, it would not immediately start up. But now it has, altho I am not drawing power from it anymore (am bypassing it and going straight to a passive surge protector power strip).

Is my UPS going down and should I replace it, or is there something else that I can look into first?

Any feedback that you have is much appreciated!

So the UPS would not start up immediately by hitting the power button, but it would turn on after you removed load from it?

Yes. I am not sure if it was due to the removal of load, or because I simply waited a bit or what.

Erasmus wrote:
What kinds of load/devices do you have typically on the UPS? Also, when you ordered the new battery from Newegg, was it an official APC RBC?

The 2 big power draws are my PC (a high end workstation) and Gateway flat panel monitor. The 2 low power draws are my router and cable modem.

I believe that my replacement battery is an official APC one. I ordered part #N82E16842101190:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16842101190&Tpk=N82E16842101190

There is a further development. The other night, I had my UPS plugged in (to power line, as well as USB to the PC), but I was not using it at all (I put all my devices power cords directly into my surge protector power strip instead of the UPS). However, I yet again had an issue and I saw this warning message from my UPS:

Your battery backup is overloaded. This means that your unit will not be able to support your PC in the event of a power problem.

Hmm, so I get this warning even with no load on the UPS. That does not sound good. Is there any way that I could send it back to you for credit for a newer unit?