Laptop keeps cutting out – help please!

PigginSkint

Hi there all you technical clever clogs! Please can you help with a problem we are having with our laptop?

Basically it keeps switching itself off, and sometimes won’t switch back on again. We think it might be a problem with the fan causing it to overheat. If we put it on the table and particularly if we have the part with the fan hanging over the edge of the table, it is much less likely to misbehave than if it is on a lap or, the favourite spot, on the arm of the sofa.

Yesterday afternoon I was using it on the arm of the sofa because I needed to print some stuff off – the cable from the printer is not long enough to reach in any other position – and it switched itself off. Later on (about 3-4 hours later) I tried to switch it back on and it would come on for a matter of seconds before switching itself back off again. This happened a few times before it refused to switch on at all. This is the second time in the last week that this has happened. A couple of hours later, OH switched it back on and it started first time.

Why do we think it is the fan, apart from the evidence that suggests that it is overheating? Well not long after we had it OH managed to drop it (something which he has managed to do a few more times since- clumsy b***er) and after that the fan ‘rattled’ on start up. There never seemed to be any problem other than that so we just had to tolerate it being noisy for the first few minutes after switching it on. A few months back we upgraded the memory and also a few months back it stopped ‘rattling’ – annoyingly I can’t actually remember whether this happened as a result of taking the back off to upgrade the memory, sorry! Anyway it stopped ‘rattling’ and at some point after that (I can’t remember how long) we started getting this problem of it switching itself off, which it is now making rather a habit of!

If anyone can shed any light on why this is happening and what we could possibly do about it, I would be very grateful. Obviously we are now worried that a some point in near future it won’t switch on at all.

Conor_3

Laptops, despite their name, aren't really designed to be used on your lap. The air intake/exhaust for the fan is pretty much always on the bottom so using it as you do does block the airflow and cause overheating. The problem is that once it has got to a certain point, the damage done is irrecoverable and it'll only get less reliable depending on what fault occurred.

PigginSkint

Conor wrote: »

Laptops, despite their name, aren't really designed to be used on your lap. The air intake/exhaust for the fan is pretty much always on the bottom so using it as you do does block the airflow and cause overheating. The problem is that once it has got to a certain point, the damage done is irrecoverable and it'll only get less reliable depending on what fault occurred.

Thanks! We actually use it on our laps very rarely for that very reason. But your explanation that the damage done is irrecoverable does seem to explain quite a lot.

Is there anything that can be done? Or is it a case that we have got to keep our fingers crossed until we can afford to buy a new one!

Conor_3

Depends entirely on what's been damaged. If its the CPU, you can change it. If its one of the components on the mainboard, not so likely.