overheating and shutting down?

I have a Gateway M1629 laptop with Windows Vista Home Premium. It has an AMD Turion 64 x2 Mobile Technology TL-60 2.00GHz processor in it. It has 3.00 GB of RAM and a 32 bit operating system.

I have not been having any issues with the pc until a few days ago. The computer had been on for about 7 hours and all of a sudden it just shut down on me. I had to click the power button to restart the computer and when it started it did not indicate that it had be shut down improperly - it was as if I was just turning it on for the first time that day. I keep the laptop raised so as to make sure that it gets enough airflow and at least once a month I will make sure that the fan is clear of any dust or obstructions. I also have the laptop on a stand that has a fan as well to pull more air into the bottom for air circulation (I hope that made sense) There is air flow on all sides of the computer and it was not hot to the touch either. A bit warm yes - but not hot.

Two days later it did the same thing to me. - this time the pc had been on for about 8 hours (maybe 8.5 hours) when it happened.

I opened it up to make sure that there was no dust or anything else clogging the airflow and I used some compressed air as well - just to be sure. The laptop is not getting hot to the touch but just for my own piece of mind I took a small little desktop fan that you would use for yourself and placed it on the desk so that it is facing the back of the laptop to give more air circulation to the underside of the laptop.

All was going fine again until earlier today when after just 4 hours it shut off on me.

I get no warning at all - the pc just shuts down. I am not sure what is going on or exactly where to start looking. I thought that perhaps it was overheating which is why I did what I did and I also went into the bios to see if I could find any information regarding a hardware monitor, status, pc health or something similar that might tell give me information regarding the system temperature; cpu fan speed; cpu temp; smart fan functions; shutdown temperatures or anything else but there is nothing like that in my bios.

Any suggestions would be so very much appreciated.

Thanks!

 

It may be battery related, take the battery out and see what happens.
More troublesome would be a breakdown of the thermal compound between the CPU and its heatsink, this takes a long time and is usually a gradual degradation.
I assume you have scanned for malware and viruses with nothing found.

 

I hadn't thought about it being the battery. Guess that is because the battery is in there but I usually have it plugged into an electrical outlet since I got tired of worrying about the battery getting low and shutting down the computer within a couple hours.

Battery life isn't all that long - never really was (but then again this pc is probably about 7 years old now - would have to find the receipt to be sure but I am pretty sure that I got it in either 2007 or 2008)

So far today it has been working nicely (now watch it shut down on me!). Anyway, I will try taking the battery out and just running in without the battery installed and see what happens. Not sure why I didn't give that a thought - but then again that is why I came here!

I have scanned for malware/spyware and viruses. I run those programs twice a week and the first time it happened I ran everything to make sure that wasn't the problem. But it can't hurt to run them again and this time I am also going to run the online scans as well --- I really should have done that the first time it happened as well as running spybot, malware bytes, super anti spyware, the avast boot time scan and windows defender. This time I will run those again as well as the online scans from Trend Micro; BitDefender; Eset NOD32; as well as the Super AntiSpyware online scan in addition to my normal scans.

Will do all of that and will let you know how things turn out. Thanks for the suggestions. If all of that comes back clean then you may need to give me some more information on the possible thermal breakdown between the heatsink and CPU - but I am going to try all of the other options first.

Scans don't always catch everything so it really can't hurt to do it again and do a few more as well - just to be sure. And I am going to try taking the battery out as well. Thanks! Will be in touch! Lisa

 

Well, I removed the battery and have been running the laptop without and I ran all of the scans. I had downloaded SpeedFan from here after it shut down the 2nd time (which was after I had run all the scans when it first happened) and now when I ran MalwareBytes it did find one item and that was the SpeedFan. I thought that to be odd and I know that SpeedFan could not be the issue since I did not download and install it until after this issue occurred a 2nd time. But just to be safe I removed SpeedFan. That is the only thing that was found when I ran MalwareBytes, Spybot, Windows Defender, Super AntiSpyware and the Boot Time Scan. I do still want to run the online Trend Micro, BitDefender and Eset Nod scans (just to be on the safe side) but so far it has not shut down again. It has only been 3 days since I removed the battery and this issue was not happening every day so I want to see how things go for a couple more days before I come to the possible conclusion that it is the battery.
Why would the battery suddenly cause the issue if it is fully charged?

Thanks Again!

 

An inexpensive solution that may help is a cooling fan base like this:

http://www.directron.com/r9nbcultkgp.html

At my shop, I have noticed that many AMD notebooks start developing problems like this. It usually involves the motherboard or the on-board video. If it gets worse, the only options are to replace the PC or find a local PC shop with good references that can repair the board. I have an on-call tech who does this and I charge $125. If you go this route, be sure the shop offers a warranty of at least 30 days on the repair.

 

Speedfan will tell you what the temperature of your CPU (and other system components if you can identify them, speccy has temperature data that might help you) is but you don't mention that number. I have it set up so that it displays the last 15mins of data, so I can the CPU temperature across the last 15 mins. If you don't want to use Speedfan, spot CPU temperatures might be obtained by running CoreTemp.

These programs may not help you though as I find it baffling that your PC should last for 7 - 8 hours before going down...maybe if you ran some programs which used intensively certain hardware in your computer you could determine the one(s) which were causing this (thermal ?) problem ?

(note that not all chips/motherboards are supported by any temperature monitoring program)

Dumb_Question
23.May.2014

 

I do have the laptop on a stand that has a fan in it. I plug it into the one usb port and it is elevated. (similar to this one - http://www.directron.com/r9nbcultkgp.html)
But I never saw the cooling pads that you mentioned.

This laptop does have the AMD processor. I can go for days with no problems, then sometimes after about 2 - 3 hours it will shut down. Other times it takes longer and as I said there are times when I can go for days with no problems.

I was starting to keep a journal to try and figure out when it is happening (specifically what I am doing when it happens) but have not come up with a specific thing that I am doing. Although, I did notice that it does happen more frequently if I happen to go onto facebook. But if I run that little electric fan behind it while on facebook it does not happen.

Maybe it is because of the AMD processor, the motherboard and or the on board video card.

I guess that considering where we live and there aren't any local pc repair shops (we live in the middle of nowhere - literally), I should start looking to replace the pc soon.

Thanks Again