Laptop turning itself off

[joeandrews]

Recently I have been working away on my laptop then without warning it suddenly turns itself off. Like someone has cut the power to it. I try to turn it back on but it's dead. Leave it for an hour and it powers up again but the same thing happens shortly after.

It feels hot underneath so I guess it's overheating and then cutting out.

I will take it to have it looked at but before I go it would be useful to understand what the problem might be, or even be directed to try something that may fix it myself.

Any help appreciated really, thank you.

 

[Igorian]

Possibly overheating. The airways can easily become blocked with dust. What make/model laptop is it?

 

[joeandrews]

ACER ASPIRE 5720.

 

[Igorian]

You can find the service manual here. You might be able to blow the airways clear without taking it apart, but I prefer to get inside to remove any potential fluff balls.

 

[candy1567]

hi

do u let ur acer laptop go into hibernate, as the acer aspire i had, had this same problem.

u can do a search on the net, wat happens is that the fans are controlled by the power management software on the computer and wen it goes into hibernate, this shuts down and does not come back on wen u take it out of hibernation, and it overheats.

i contacted acer about this and yes they do know about this problem, and they told me to either disable hibernate, or wen the laptops been in hibernation mode, then restart the laptop which restarts the software and the fans are working again.

Juliex

 

[wotan]

over time the blades of the fan accumulate dust this reduces the effiency
as the fan is usually located near the CPU this overheats causing an over temp shut down, the only effective way is to remove fan and clear dust away.

Wotan

 

[zorgan]

you could purchase some compressed air in a can from maplins, probably around £5 - use the long tubed adaptor to blast the area where you can see the vents.

you could also release some of the screws from underneath to access the fan better, just remember to lay out all your screws on some A4 paper and mark where they came from, look under battery for some more screws and you also may have to take off the covers underneath.

just try not to handle / touch anything inside and be aware of ESD

best done on a rubber mat with a grounding bracelet on if in doubt.

sometimes if you just remove the keyboard on some models you can actually have full view of the fans in some laptops so check that out too.

 

[TheVictorian]

Put the hose from your vacuum onto the fan outlet and give it a good sucking, sometimes clears the dust out. I'm not a fan of air dusters as they have a tendancy to blow things in rather than out if the laptop is not dismantled first.