Laptop overheating and dying

Mr_Forgetful

Does anyone know about laptops overheating and shutting themselves off?

I gave my daughter a laptop and the thing gets hot after it does some work and then kills itself. It is an Acer Aspire and it has always had problems. It now has ubuntu on it instead of Vista and I have had a message that the critical temperature is reached and then it dies. We thought it was because the fan filter was half caked in dust and fluff. We hoovered it and on that basis I gave it to my daughter for a present and it still does it!

I have a belkin cooling pad coming today in which one of the reviewers said it helped their acer which would "faint". Does anyone know if I can replace the fan with a better one or if there is anything else I can do to fix it if this latest idea doesn't work? http://www.ebuyer.com/product/140685

Many thanks.

Mondez

It likely has a lot of dust and other fluff clogging the vents so the flow of air isn't as good as it needs to be to keep it cool. Solution is to dismantle the laptop carefully, keeping track of all the screws, until you get to the heatsink near the fan. Remove the heatsink and clear out any blockage behind the vents on it. While you are there you might want to clean off the paste between the heatsink and CPU and reapply a thin layer of new paste to ensure good contact between CPU and heatsink.

Mr_Forgetful

Thanks for that. I've read about getting a can of compressed air instead of using the hoover as it is a bit gentler. Is that the best thing for cleaning it? I don't know about the heatsink or the paste so do you think it is worth giving it to a professional to do the cleaning as I don't want to break any of it?

Dave_C_2

My tip is to use your digital camera (in close-up or macro mode if you have it) to take photos of where the bits and screws go.

This costs nothing but time and can help when you put it all back together.

Dave

Mondez

Compressed air might clean it if it isn't too badly clogged, but my experience is that when its over heating, its too late for compressed air to shift the blockage. The solution unfortunately is to dismantle it and take out what is best described as the "furry slug" of dust that has built up behind the vent on the heatsink.
Depending on the model it can be very easy to do this by removing a cover on the base or require almost complete disassembly. Either way, provided you don't suffer from any conditions making it difficult to use your hands it should be possible for anyone to do this with an appropriate set of screwdrivers and some patience. As Dave_C says, taking pics as you go so you know which screw went where can save a lot of confusion later on as you put it back together.
If you really can't face attempting the disassembly, then yes, anyone who has any experience of dismantling laptops or similar devices should be able to do with for you, but thats not saving money

closed

air is free, cans of it aren't

1st check the fan is spinning freely and vents are not blocked up by whatever it is sat on

check for bios upgrades, and any known faults with graphics cards in your model

Hammyman

Mr_Forgetful wrote: »

We thought it was because the fan filter was half caked in dust and fluff. We hoovered it and on that basis I gave it to my daughter for a present and it still does it!

You had the right idea but approached it from the wrong side of the heatsink..

The problem is that once the fluff has formed into a solid rectangular block on the fan side of the heatsink, it is basically like felt carpet underlay. The fins on the heatsink are too narrowly spaced to suck it through with a hoover. The only solution is to gain access to the CPU fan, remove it and clean out the rectangular block of fluff by hand. It cannot be done from the "outside" side of the heatsink.

Do not use compressed air. At best, it'll do nothing. At worst it'll seperate off a chunk which will then block and seize the fan and kill that as well.

On most older Acers, you can get to the cooling fan by removing a large plastic cover on the base. You should then be able to see the fan and a bit of plastic tape/card bridging the gap between it and the copper heatsink. It is under this card/tape where the fluff will be.

Mr_Forgetful

You were right in that it needed new paste. That solved half of the battle. The fan was also not kicking in at all under Ubuntu. An update to the BIOS fixed this and so far the laptop has been on for 2 hours and is still at 50 degrees c. Before it was at over 100 within 10 minutes. Thanks for all the advice as it looked like it was a gonner.

I really appreciate all the help.

KillerWatt

50° C is still quite hot, mine doesn't see that even when the CPU is getting spanked at 100% constantly.
Is it an AMD processor by any chance?

Hammyman

KillerWatt wrote: »

50° C is still quite hot, mine doesn't see that even when the CPU is getting spanked at 100% constantly.
Is it an AMD processor by any chance?

50C for a laptop isn't quite hot at all. 65C is.

Hammyman

Mr_Forgetful wrote: »

The fan was also not kicking in at all under Ubuntu. An update to the BIOS fixed this

I've not seen that bug in Ubuntu for over 2 years now. What version are you using?