If you own a Toshiba laptop, we’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that you’re going to get a new battery for free. The bad news is that your current battery is basically a brick full of molten lava.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced a recall for battery packs in Toshiba laptops sold between June 2011 and January 2016. The recall includes nearly 40 models of laptops from the Japanese manufacturer. The company has published a full list of affected devices so consumers can see if they own one of the fire hazards.
Toshiba has also released a free, downloadable utility that can automatically detect if a device is using a defective battery. Owners of affected devices can get a free replacement battery from Toshiba.
The CPSC recall affects slightly fewer than 100,000 units sold in the United States and another 100,000 sold in Canada. So far, there have been four known instances of the batteries overheating and melting. Luckily, none of those cases resulted in injuries.
Most of the defective batteries were sold with their laptops, but some users may also have received the problematic units if they purchased a replacement battery or had it replaced during a repair.
If you own one of the bad batteries, Toshiba recommends turning off your laptop and removing the battery pack immediately. Until a replacement pack arrives, you’ll have to power your device using its power adapter.
Toshiba’s latest recall marks the largest such event for the company, though it still falls short of competitor Dell’s massive recall of 4.1 million batteries in 2006 and Sony’s effort to replace 9.6 million batteries the same year.
H/T PCWorld