Randomly shut down issue by 5 year laptop

thedrama

Hey guyz and girlz. What im mentioning is a Toshiba laptop which is very old. The issue i am having is just a stupid surrender problem. What does that mean? The laptop shuts down randomly while in the middle of something then nothing can be done.
just looking at the screen, then,

Even though this is not new, this happens when laptop is plugged in with the power adapter. until a week ago, it somehow stopped to do that. However, after i installed GNS3 and had an obligation to work with IE 8, damn thing begun occurring again.

CPU fan doesn't do its job most of the time. Perhaps the reason is overheating. Other than this, i am really hating such things.

Any solution?

CodeBlox

Overheating may very well be the problem. Does it get really hot?

thedrama

Not exactly. However, even fan gets activated, it just make too much noise which makes me furious.

Novalith478

Could be dust in the fan. My HP laptop had such poor design that if you don't do a thorough number with compressed air every 2 weeks, I can't even game (due to overheating and random shut downs).

I'd go get some compressed air and do a number on the innards of your laptop.

doobies

Im typing on my toshiba sttelight m105... i belive as... 5 years old... and it shuts down when the heat sink gets too hot. normally if im working in protools or have some heavy sights up or photshop. This never happened until last year early... last year... figged out the fan is dirty clogged. You will probably want to clean it out or get someone to clean it out to increase the air flow to the sink.

outside of that.. (hw) it will be SW which meanz you might havz a bug.

killwar

Well you may need to clean the laptop parts and remove the dust from the inside first.

Then do this little trick:

Take out the battery, remove the main supply cable, hold power button down for 30 secs,
put only the power supply but do not put the battery,
Next turn the laptop back on put the battery after you seen it powering, later.

Hope that might help

SteveLord

With the others. Heat is #1 culprit. Especially with laptops. Cleaning out and going as far as reapplying thermal paste to the CPU is easy enough to do.

WafflesAndRootbeer

Run a system monitoring tool and that will tell you if it is overheating or not. If it's not overheating, then it's an electrical failure, which you can't fix.

quinnyfly

Check windows log files to rule out any software issues, passing that - hardware is next, heat is enemy N#1 for lappys as we know. I usually prop mine up with a book at the back so airflow is not impeded from intake to outlet. I agree with WafflesandRootBeer, I have serviced a few lappys with similar probs, even after cleaning CPU fan, copper piping, new thermal grease, the lot! Still same probs with some models. I also check the BIOS to see if there is a particular CPU heat threshold and have made some adjustments, sometimes it helped but others not.

I would run a testing program and see what it turns up, if its a mobo issue, throw it away and get a new one. I mean, after 5 years, thats a good innings for any lappy, especially and old toshiba!!

Does this only happen when running any particular apps, or all the time? You know it is amazing just how caked-up in dust and grim the little CPU fans can get, even in the cleanest of environments, I used to pull them apart completely and even wash the fan assembley <I know what ya all thinking??? "SH*T is he serious, yep, so long as ya use distilled H20 as ya last cleaning agent or that electrical cleaning gell and its all good!!>.....but for the most part, once it was dry and the system case and chassis underside clean and some new grease, it usually did the trick.

It might pay to run Memtester or swap out your ram for some known good working chips, (seen this a few times also). Do you get a BSOD when it shuts down <check RAM>.

Also check the battery, swap it for a good one if you have a spare, try this with your AC adapter aswell, or borrow one or purchase a universal, the main cuplrits for shutdowns with these models seem to be heat and electrical related.

For some extra advice try this link:Laptop Repair Help » Toshiba Satellite A60 and A65 problems

Hope it helps and I don't mean to be insensitive, but my recommendation is to backup what you want to keep and then use the old lappy as a wheel chock.

MAC_Addy

Did you check the event log? By the looks of things on your first post. You said that the CPU fan doesn't do it's job. This is most definitely the main cause.