Could my laptop be damaging my hardware?

TenLeftFingers

My laptop is a dell inspiron4000, and it gets EXTREMELY hot! So hot that I cant put it on my lap without a phonebook underneath. And after watching a DVD, the disc comes out roasting.

I bought an NEC CD/DVD +/- RW which worked great for a while and now cannot read or write beyond 70% of the discs capacity. This includes playing audio CD's, watching DVD's, reading and writing to CD-R's.

I have tried different software (I'm running linux) and I have tried reading media that used to work. The drive is definately faulty now.

The reason I'm posting here is that if the heat of the laptop is causing the damage, I wont bother replacing it - Ill get a new laptop.

Thanks for reading, and any advice is appreciated!!

merlin

Gosh

Try a laptop cooler here or here

jetsonx

Seen this happen a couple of times before.

*BACKUP ALL critical data now * You are now on borrowed time with
this system.

Cooling devices will extend the life a little bit but it is likely the damage has
already been done.

Usually what happens next is the video card or the hard disk drive will be the next to give up the ghost.

TenLeftFingers

Thanks folks. Thirty euro to extend the life of my laptop makes sense, but I think the hassle of taking it (the cooler)* around with me would be awkward. Is it safe to assume that a new laptop wouldnt suffer from this problem if it had a pentium-M chip? Mine has a PIII desktop processor in it.

jetsonx

It could just as easily happen a Pentium-M.

greglo23

intel chips tend to run far hotter than amd's as ive seen temp differentials of 18C between the two of them and sometimes far more. intel made a big gaffe by putting desktop chips in a laptop as they dont have the same ability to reduce the voltage if high temps are reached. one thing you could do is try and get at the fan and clean it out. you would be amazed at the crap that can build up around the heatsink and ruin the effectiveness of it.

here's some more from the wiki
Overheating

Around the year of 2003, Dell released several lines of Inspiron notebooks which were having problems with cooling properly, causing them to overheat many times and may even burn up the video card, motherboard, or cause the laptop to shut down automatically. Some people believe that the systems overheated due to the processors that were used in those laptops - Intel's Pentium 4 chip which went up to 3.2GHz (3,200MHz) for some models. Laptops of those lines also came with Intel's Celeron processor, which would create a little bit less heat, but might still run into the overheating problem. Another reason on why these machines might overheat is due to the fact that they contained the fan on the bottom of the unit, unlike others where they are located on the sides and rear, where air could not flow through the unit when sat on a table or a desk. Affected models include the Dell Inspiron 1100, 1150, 5100, and 5150. Many consumers state that refurbished Inspiron machines of those model numbers do not overheat, probably because Dell found a way of fixing that problem. "Dell Inspiron 1150 Review" Dell has yet to admit any problems regarding the design of the affected notebooks.

i know there's an article somewhere online by someone who shows how to go about stripping and cleaning your laptop if you feel you were up to it.

http://tinyurl.com/e8lnk a manual for the 4000 on ebay