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laptop shutting down

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13 replies

by sue t

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I have a laptop running XP that has started to just shutdown. I have tried a different battery, different power adapter, new hard drive and new memory. Sometimes it will run for a while and other times it will shutdown within 3 minutes of turning it on. I thought it might be overheating except I can try turning it on first thing in the morning and it will still turn off in less that 3minutes. What else can I try? It is a Compal model AL51 with 512mb ram and a pentium 4 processor. I have looked in event viewer and there is nothing there so Windows does not know it is happening. Does anyone have any suggestions?

13 replies

by peconet tietokoneet

Is the laptop hot anywhere around the base or near the battery compartment?. If not you could try and update your memory to at least 2gb. The memory might be at fault, with out good memory your computer will not switch on for long.
Hope this helps you out.

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.

by oh smeg

Have you tried cleaning out the Air Intake for the CPU Cooling Fans?

If the Heatsink is blocked with Dust & Other Rubbish or has come loose this could be the problem.

To prevent the Air Ways getting Blocked and otherwise messed up I use a Cool Pad like this one

http://www.antec.com/antec_test/productDetails.php?id=75004

It just works and keeps things clean and working. But first you need to have a Clean NB to begin with. Also check the Heat Sink for tightness and so on. If the Heat Transfer Paste has been contaminated it may also need replacing.

Col

by normh3

I agree it sounds like a heat problem. I checked the COMPAL website and your model doesn't seem to be supported any longer. Perhaps the thermal paste that was mentioned by Oh Smeg has broken down and is not transferring the heat very well to the heatsink. Unfortunately, checking this on a laptop is not as easy as a desktop. You might try booting from a Linux live CD or some other bootable media to eliminate XP as the cause.

by sue t

My husband had major surgery today so it will be a few days before I will be able to check out anything else on the laptop but will let you know when I do.
Thank you.

by oh smeg

Don't sweat the unimportant things you have enough worries without adding to them. :)

Col

by sue t

I'm sorry I did not get back to this sooner. I did take the laptop apart and made sure the fan was working properly and that the air vents were not clogged. I reseated everything possible and put new thermal compound in. I replaced the hard drive with a new one and also replaced the memory. I did not try booting to a live CD because 50% of the time it shutsdown it does it when you first turn it on and it does not even get to the screen to enter setup to change the boot order. Does anyone have any other ideas? At this point I believe it is most likely a bad motherboard. I have tried the power adapter on another laptop and also starting the laptop without the battery and both seem to be good. Thank you.

by oh smeg

But if that is soldered to the M'Board you are fairly well stuffed and will have to replace the M'Board.

Sorry for not replying sooner but I have not been receiving any Alerts to new Posts to Questions for some time now so I didn't see this till now. :(

Col

by sue t

the cpu isn't soldered to the motherboard. I'll have to see if I can talk someone who has the same model of laptop into letting me "borrow" it for an hour and just not tell them I am going to tear it apart. I'll post again after I do it.
I've been having the same problem with the Alerts, sometimes they show up a week later or not at all.

by sue t

I have marked several answers as useful even though they did not solve the problem because usually those answers will fix the problem. We have since bought a couple of backup laptops and have put this one in storage in case we can use parts from it for another one of the same make/model. I am pretty certain it is a bad motherboard since we tried everything else but we do not want to put that much money into it so I am closing this question.
Thank you all for taking the time to reply. Actually I don't see an option for closing the question. I am probably missing something.

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