My Vista platform laptop (yeah...yeah...) runs fine for 10-15 minutes and then just shuts off with no warning. The area on the housing where you rest your wrists while typing gets hot and the bottom of the laptop gets hot and then it shuts off.

Initially, I though that perhaps the hard drives were full and I was running out of disk space because the capacity indicator below each partition was red. I cleared 40gigs off of the C: drive and the line is now blue with 46 of 224 gigs free. But, I'm still having the same problem. The D: drive however is still red only 562mb's of 7 gigs available. I can't do anything with the D: drive because when I click on it, I get a warning that says this is my recovery partition and any deletions or changes could have serious consequences to future recovery efforts.

Virus software is up to date and everything is showing green lights with no infections. Any assistance would be appreciated...

Fan running?

If not, then may be shutting down due to temp.

Fan is running. Are there any settings for the fan within Windows? Speed? Thermostat?

Get a program called "Speed Fan". Monitoring the heat your labtop is producing is absolutely essential.

The laptop is probably overheating and shutting itself down as a safety precaution. Try running your laptop on something where the bottom is exposed to circulation.

See if that increases usability time. Then you need to clean out the air passage for the fan. Try using air duster from the exterior. If its not good enough dismantle your computer and clean the inside where fan cools the processor.

There may be lost connection between the top of your processor and the copper metal heatsink.

In that event you would need to get new thermal adhesive and remove the old adhesive from the top of the processor and the bottom of your heat sink with alcohol and reapply to make a sound connection. Heat sink may need replacing in some cases.


I would start by googling the model of your laptop in google with search terms like "shutting down."

Run that speed fan program and if is running at over 80 degrees celcius of the bat then search the model number of your laptop and type "overheating" and see if there are common problems associated with the heat sink assembly.

This is a very common problem and can be avoided with maintainance. It is very important to monitor the temperature your laptop is running at because it can lose its ability to circulate air if its sitting on a bed for instance. It also builds up dust and particles the restrict air easier becauses its air passages are more compact.

Sorry for that was kind of long but its important to know.

Thanks, Gerry. I am efforting that now...

Click this link and click where it says SpeedFan 4.49 under download.

http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php

Check the temp with SpeedFan and monitor the temperature variation of your processor before shut down. That'll tell you if heat is your problem.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/19/2013 10:38PM by chuckhoffmann.

Steve Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My Vista platform laptop (yeah...yeah...) runs
> fine for 10-15 minutes and then just shuts off
> with no warning. The area on the housing where you
> rest your wrists while typing gets hot and the
> bottom of the laptop gets hot and then it shuts
> off.
>
> Initially, I though that perhaps the hard drives
> were full and I was running out of disk space
> because the capacity indicator below each
> partition was red. I cleared 40gigs off of the C:
> drive and the line is now blue with 46 of 224 gigs
> free. But, I'm still having the same problem. The
> D: drive however is still red only 562mb's of 7
> gigs available. I can't do anything with the D:
> drive because when I click on it, I get a warning
> that says this is my recovery partition and any
> deletions or changes could have serious
> consequences to future recovery efforts.
>
> Virus software is up to date and everything is
> showing green lights with no infections. Any
> assistance would be appreciated...

What's the CPU temps? Download SpeedFan (free) and find out.

It sounds like it's overheating. That'd be my first guess.

hard drive space is irrelevent to the issue you're describing.

Also what's the model of the laptop?

@Road Musings: The PC in question is an HP Pavilion TX1000. Fortunately, it is not my primary machine.

@All: Well, I just did a dozen or so restarts to get all of my data backed up one final time. Off to bed...will DL speedfan in the AM and post again. Thanks again for everyone's help.

Steve Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> @Road Musings: The PC in question is an HP
> Pavilion TX1000. Fortunately, it is not my primary
> machine.
>
> @All: Well, I just did a dozen or so restarts to
> get all of my data backed up one final time. Off
> to bed...will DL speedfan in the AM and post
> again. Thanks again for everyone's help.

Aha! It's as I suspected.

Firstly, that model has a number of issues. That it's lasted as long as it has is quite an accomplishment. A number of related models were recalled, but evidently the TX1000 never did.

There were alot of laptops around the Vista rollout that had GPU issues. The problems were with the NVIDIA 6, 7, and 8 series GPUs. The 8-series chips were the worst, they'd fail predictably within a certain period of time. HP-Compaq recalled a number of laptops.

Fortunately it sounds like you (probably) aren't experiencing a GPU issue (yet), you're simply overheating. Which is also a known issue with that model.

There is a way to resolve this issue but it isn't going to be fun and may not be worth it.

Take the laptop apart and replace the thermal paste on the chipset/northbridge/GPU and CPU with fresh compound (preferably something like Arctic Silver 5). Are the fans still spinning up well? If not, it's time to replace them as well. If they are, make sure they are well and truly clean (dust builds up).

That should drop the temps. You may also want to use the laptop on one of the laptop fan/cooler combos out there (CoolerMaster has a couple).

Oh fuck, he's got an Nvidia GPU HP, I had one of those. Damnit, what do I remember from my attempts at repair. I remember completely replacing the heat sink and using Artic Silver to reattach.

The laptop still had connectivity issues after I resolved the heat issue. It was just garbage.

Lookin at the specs here it's an AMD 1.6 dual core with 2 gigs of ram and a 12 inch display. Sounds like a old inexpensive laptop.

At this point you have nothing to lose if you try to clean the vents with a duster from the exterior if that helps.

Next Step if it doesn't, Look up a video on the disassembly of your laptop. Becareful with screw placement and don't be afraid to take pictures although you can use the video as reference.

I know when I had to do a heat sink replacement on my HP with the same exact issue I had to literally take all the components of the laptop apart, I mean everything, motherboard to the side and everything.

That laptop is not worth having a technician repair it at cost. Buy a new laptop or try to repair it yourself using some artic silver, alcohol and small electronics phillips screwdriver.

Best of luck. Been there.

Definitely a heat issue, most likely the processor. When I had video card heat issues, the display would go but not the system. When I had hard drive heat issues, the system would just lock up and become unresponsive.

You've already gotten plenty of great advice in this thread. Check to make sure all fans are running, try operating it in an environment with better cooling and air flow, and try re-applying the heat sink and such.

Depending on how old it is, I wouldn't try anything more past that, personally. Laptops don't leave you a lot of room to use creative solutions. In a tower you can always add more case fans on the cheap, but you don't have a lot of viable real estate in the laptop.

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13 4826 0948 82695 25847. Yes.

i hate melting processors

i'll take sl and slower speed any day over a headache

the longer you hack the less speed you need

why is it everything microsoft shuts down american electronics factories and promotes stuff in asia. and continual "updating" (forced upgrades)

ever notice that?

Take your laptop to your best vaccuuum cleaner.

Put the suction nozzle over the heat output .


Turn on your vaccuum and now let it suck out the dust buildup.


Fact is you need to take your laptop apart and you need to go buy some heat sink compound.

The other reason than dust is that the heat sink compund on your laptop has dried out and a cleaning and a re-application of the stuff needs to be re applied to the CPU.

Put it all back together and now your laptop should run nice and cool like new again.