Major laptop problem, any ideas?

[goodbye]

[Warren]

[goodbye]

[sponge]

[goodbye]

I can't boot in DOS, it's got XP. But lately it's been so bad it shuts down before even booting up, if it does boot it freezes a few seconds later.

[refractor]

Open all the hatches and push down (or pop out and put back) the processor, ram, etc.

[Mechcommander]

My mom's had this problem too. We fixed it by making a little stand out of wood with a fan in it. It keeps the thing cool, and stops it from killing itself.

[goodbye]

I dont think its overheating, just took it outside in the cold and it does the same thing.

[Village_Ideot]

wahohh mystic that exact thing happened to my desktop when i first built it

the only thing i did is open the case and let it get cooler. i went out and bought some new fans.

my guess is that a fan went bad and it is overheating, i mean that is the exact same thing that my desktop did to me.

[goodbye]

So I guess that is it then. How hard a repair will it be?

[sponge]

[Dan East]

It is probably overheating. The temp of the air outside the laptop is in has nothing to do with the heat of the processor itself. I have seen this happen several times in desktop PCs whose CPU fan has died. If the PC had been off for an hour or so (so the CPU was at room temp) it would run fine for 15 minutes or so and freeze up. After turning off and back on it would only run for a minute or so because the CPU was still very hot. A CPU without a fan will normally run so hot it will literally cause burns if you touch it. Some laptops have cooling vents on the bottom. Make sure you have the laptop on a smooth hard surface. If you place it on a bed or other cloth material then it will block those vents (my Dell has a cooling fan and vents on the side and back so I can use it on the bed, while other laptops I have owned could not be used on a soft surface or it would overheat).

As for repairing it yourself, when it comes to laptops most everything in the inside is proprietary. You would probably have to get a replacement fan directly from the OEM. Also, the BIOS is what controls the fan. If you flashed to a different BIOS lately then there could be an issue there. Finally, there is a sensor that the BIOS uses to determine when to turn the fan on and at what speed. If that sensor is bad or has come loose from the processor heat sink then it will not be reporting the actual high temp of the CPU, so the BIOS won't know to turn the fan on.

Dan East

[mongoose]

[(TSC)Bender]

[sponge]