Laptop Spontaneously Shuts Off

[Caelestis]

Typical of my dad, one of his little toys starts to malfunction so he just goes out and buys a brand new one, never even attempting to fix the old one. So he just bough himself a new compaq laptop, and said I could just have the damned thing. It's a Sony Vaio, about 3 years old.

Basically, it'll run from anywhere between a half hour and 6 hours, then it'll either just shut completely off, or freeze to the point where you have to just yank the battery out in hopes of getting a reboot. I'd like nothing more than to have a spare computer to keep at home that I could run an ftp on, or download some very long torrents or something... but that does me little good if I know the blasted thing wont stay on more than about 6 hours.

Any ideas on what the problem could be? It's obviously a hardware one, since I've never seen even windows to pull shit like that... but knowing it's a hardware problem doesn't get me much closer to fixing it.

 

[Curtis]

Lots of newer laptops have a thermal shutdown feature that will turn the laptop off when the CPU gets too hot. I'd guess you've got a dust problem, or maybe whatever passes as a heatsink has come loose.

 

[racketboy]

I've seen one where the AC adapter plug was loose -- when it was wiggled, it shut off

 

[IceDigger]

Does it do that without the battery in it? Just on AC?

 

[Area-51]

My laptop at work(Dell) used to do this same thing. It was the battery that was flaky. would run fine on AC power only, without the battery installed. But when battery was put in, it would work for awhile, then abruptly shut down.

Remove the battery and use only AC power and see what happens.

 

[Caelestis]

Originally posted by racketboy@Jan 12, 2004 @ 09:34 AM

I've seen one where the AC adapter plug was loose -- when it was wiggled, it shut off

I'm pretty sure that's not it, as I saw how my mom's reacted when that happened to it... it never froze up like this sucker does.

Ice, I hadn't checked on that yet... but my dad decided to take it with him to transfer some files over this week while he's in TX... so I'm stuck without any chance to look at it.

Woulda been nice if he'd told me about that sooner.

I'll try getting any dust out of it and checking to make sure there's some ventilation... and when I get a chance, I'll see if it'll work without the battery in.

 

[RitualOfTheTrout]

Yes I does sound like it is some sort of power issue..

If none of the above ideas work check and make sure the hardrive power and ide cables arent lose. Something like that would most likely cause the computer to just shut down or freeze randomly.

 

[racketboy]

Originally posted by IceMan2k@Jan 12, 2004 @ 03:03 PM

Does it do that without the battery in it? Just on AC?

with the battery in

the mobo had to be replaced

 

[mtxblau]

Vaio? Is it running 98 or ME?

There was a problem with laptops running windows 98 that froze up, reboot or crashed intermittently. Head to sony and get the latest drivers for it.

In fact, it does happen with other laptops running ME and XP, but the latest issues I've read indicates it's a video issue. Vaios tend to use the ATi chipset, so check the latest drivers (including rage3d.com) before assuming anything else.

Also, a hard shut off/reset is FN+Power button, which is a fairly common practice (Rather than taking the battery out).

 

[Caelestis]

Originally posted by MTXBlau@Jan 14, 2004 @ 05:25 PM

Vaio? Is it running 98 or ME?

There was a problem with laptops running windows 98 that froze up, reboot or crashed intermittently. Head to sony and get the latest drivers for it.

In fact, it does happen with other laptops running ME and XP, but the latest issues I've read indicates it's a video issue. Vaios tend to use the ATi chipset, so check the latest drivers (including rage3d.com) before assuming anything else.

Also, a hard shut off/reset is FN+Power button, which is a fairly common practice (Rather than taking the battery out).

It's running on XP, though knowing my father, I doubt he's upgraded the drivers on it. That's one thing worth checking it.

My father should stop back in on saturday, so I should be getting the laptop to experiment on then.