Laptop shutting down after 20/30 mins

nanatopsy

Can anyone help have tried to search but can't find the answer. Today of all days, my laptop has taken to going slow and shutting itself off. Is there a simple answer to this, never had this before? TIA and Merry Christmas to all MSE'ers

fwor

There are quite a lot of things it could be, but the thing that matches the 20-30 minutes the best is overheating.

Can you listen to confirm that the CPU cooling fan is running? Does it get hot externally?

There are a few freeware utilities that are available that will tell you what temperature the CPU is running at, but a quicker alternative may be to enter the BIOS setup just after it has shut down and been restarted. Many BIOS setup pages now have a "PC health" option which shows internal temperatures. If anything is running above - say - 50 degrees C you probably have a cooling problem.

GemJar_2

thats what I thought fwor... be very very careful you don't fry your motherboard, i'd begin to back up all your stuff just in case.

computershack

nanatopsy wrote: »

Can anyone help have tried to search but can't find the answer. Today of all days, my laptop has taken to going slow and shutting itself off. Is there a simple answer to this, never had this before? TIA and Merry Christmas to all MSE'ers

Space between the cooling fan and the heatsink is blocked full of fluff so the air doesn't get to the heatsink and the laptop gets hot, goes into limp home and eventually shuts off to prevent it frying. Needs taking apart to do it - blowing compressed air through doesn't work.

Every single one I sell that I've got from home users I clean the fans out on and nearly all of them from 18 months old onwards are blocked solid with a wad of fluff and showing signs of it from 12 months old...

gh05

like others sais, overheating if it turns off after a while.

nanatopsy

Thanks everyone for this. The fan is working and the exterior is getting hot. Am trying to back up now, jusy got halfway through and it switched off! Will take it to the computer shop after the holidays, and only use for a few minutes at a time until then, would that be ok or too dangerous?:beer:

computershack

nanatopsy wrote: »

Thanks everyone for this. The fan is working and the exterior is getting hot. Am trying to back up now, jusy got halfway through and it switched off! Will take it to the computer shop after the holidays, and only use for a few minutes at a time until then, would that be ok or too dangerous?:beer:

It is definitely what I said then about fluff blocking it up. You'll notice the fan is working quite fast but you can barely feel anything other than heat coming out the vent.

Its not really a good idea to keep on using it, as it can get hot enough to cause breaks in the solder joints, and it'll only get worse.