Laptop Suddenly Turning itself OFF.

islanderre

Evening all,

I have a 2005 Toshiba Satellite A30 212 laptop which has started playing up. When surfing the net with more htan 3 windows open or playing music while surfing the web, it suddenly turns itself OFF but will start again straight away when I press the on button.

One thing I have noticed is that the two cooling fans do be running at top speed when this happens and the underside of the computer does be quite warm.

When I do restart, windows displays the meassage that it was not shut down properly but I just let the timer run out and let it start up as normal.

So, what do ye think???? Is the laptop close to retirement???? Its running windows XP and office 2007.

Your thoughts are much appreciated.

kikel

sounds like it's over heating. Check you fans, do they look clogged with dust and dirt. Where do you use your laptop? using it on you lap can restrict air flow. try using it on a table and see does it power off. If you already use it on a hard surface try raising the back of it up with a book to improve the flow of air flow. If that works ya got your fans willl need a clean.

bbbbb

I had a similar problem with an old laptop. Research & advice suggested it was most likely an over heating problem. Best to try and clean out any dust (can of air), and if you're a bit more adventurous, reapplying thermal paste to the CPU/heatsink. Chances you can find a system manual on line which shows you how to open it up & access the bits.
Unfortunately, my laptop was still toast after this. I now have a new toshiba!

islanderre

Folks,

Many thanks for the prompt replies.

Hopefully it is a simple problem with the cooling which I hopre can be cured easily.

I'll give cleaning it a go after christmas.......... surly their cannot be that much to it.

Thanks again folks.

kikel

islanderre wrote: »

surly their cannot be that much to it.

even easier when there is a step by step guide.

http://icrontic.com/articles/clean_laptop_heatsink

Voodu Child

From the specs it seems your laptop had a (then) powerful processor and discrete graphics card. So it definitely could be an overheating problem, thermal shutdown is programmed into your bios to prevent damage to the laptop if its not able to cool itself sufficiently.

You should definitely clean the fan/vent, if you havent done it will likely be clogged with dust. You can use something like HWMonitor (free to download) to check temperatures, it will be useful to know the before/after so you can see if cleaning the fans has done any good.

There are other steps you can take to reduce your system temperature (notebook coolers, undervolting the processor, re-applying the thermal paste, etc) but cleaning the fan/vents is the simplest and in most cases should be enough.

islanderre

Folks,

Many, Many thanks for the help. Have done the heat sink clean and now laptop is running fine; the fans run intermittently on slow speed.

The link for the step by step guide gave me the courage needed to do the clean out and sure enough the air entrance to the heat sink was clogged with dust.

Thanks again for the help; Boards.ie is a great resource.

Happy Christmas to ye all.