Laptop PC has started turning off unexpectedly

[dolot]

I have a Sager laptop that I've had for over 5 years. In the last week it has started turning itself off unexpectedly. You'll just be doing whatever and it suddenly turns off. Last night I started it in BIOS mode and just left it running, and 15 minutes later it turned itself off. I'm thinking something is wrong hardware wise, but I don't know what it is or how to go about finding out - or even if it's worth the effort. Is the thing dead?

[techgnome]

Sounds like it is overheating to me. when the cpu temp gets to a point, some laptops will shut down to protect themselves. check for clogged vents and make sure the fan is working too.

-tg

[dilettante]

Could even be a failing battery pack since this is a laptop. People often run them plugged into chargers all day long and a great many of these are not engineered for that abuse at all.

Once the battery pack has been damaged in such a manner it can only hold a charge that lingers near the marginal voltage level. Fire up the machine and it will run for a little while and then when the voltage drops below the threshold emergency shutdown gets triggered. The shutdown attempts to protect against over-discharge, though it is pointless since over-charge has already damaged the battery beyond repair.

Some battery packs may respond to a remediation-charge schedule. But this depends on the battery chemistry, charge monitoring circuits in the pack, the type of charger supplied, etc. Even then once a pack has been seriously damaged the only cure is a new battery pack. If such a schedule exists for your laptop it would be described in the manuals (probably digitial, not the trivial paper quick setup broadsheets that ship in the box anymore).


Tons of laptops get discarded due to abused batteries. Very few should ever be operated continuously plugged into chargers.

[dolot]

Could even be a failing battery pack since this is a laptop. People often run them plugged into chargers all day long and a great many of these are not engineered for that abuse at all.

Once the battery pack has been damaged in such a manner it can only hold a charge that lingers near the marginal voltage level. Fire up the machine and it will run for a little while and then when the voltage drops below the threshold emergency shutdown gets triggered. The shutdown attempts to protect against over-discharge, though it is pointless since over-charge has already damaged the battery beyond repair.

Some battery packs may respond to a remediation-charge schedule. But this depends on the battery chemistry, charge monitoring circuits in the pack, the type of charger supplied, etc. Even then once a pack has been seriously damaged the only cure is a new battery pack. If such a schedule exists for your laptop it would be described in the manuals (probably digitial, not the trivial paper quick setup broadsheets that ship in the box anymore).


Tons of laptops get discarded due to abused batteries. Very few should ever be operated continuously plugged into chargers.

The battery is shot for sure. I made the mistake you mentioned above - leaving it plugged in when not on. If I try to boot it without the power cord plugged in, it will try for .5 sec and then give up.

[dolot]

Sounds like it is overheating to me. when the cpu temp gets to a point, some laptops will shut down to protect themselves. check for clogged vents and make sure the fan is working too.

-tg

I checked and indeed the heat sinks were clogged - I gave it a good cleanup and... we'll see how it goes. I may have to look into what dilettante said as well.

[dolot]

Sounds like it is overheating to me. when the cpu temp gets to a point, some laptops will shut down to protect themselves. check for clogged vents and make sure the fan is working too.

-tg

I checked and indeed the heat sinks were clogged - I gave it a good cleanup and... we'll see how it goes. I may have to look into what dilettante said as well.

[techgnome]

I had a laptop whose battery became shot after a while too... I simply removed it and pluged in the power cord... sure it essentially turned it into a desktop of sorts... but it continuted to run.

-tg

[dolot]

I tried that, but my battery pack is integrated with the shell of the laptop - I would loose one of my laptop's feet if I pulled it, and it would leave the HD and something other components exposed.

[dolot]

Well, I let my laptop run all night and it never shut off. Looks like just cleaning the cooling system did the trick. That saved me a ton of cash on a new laptop, which my wife was advocating that I do. Maybe I should have taken advantage of that.

[dilettante]

Glad to hear it isn't a battery life issue. As time goes on replacements can become difficult to acquire.

Good call on cleaning the cooling pathway, fan, etc. That can be pretty critical on a laptop, and most people don't run a temperature monitor tray applet to keep an eye on heating.

[dolot]

Glad to hear it isn't a battery life issue. As time goes on replacements can become difficult to acquire.

Good call on cleaning the cooling pathway, fan, etc. That can be pretty critical on a laptop, and most people don't run a temperature monitor tray applet to keep an eye on heating.

Last time I checked - about a year ago I guess - a new battery was around $150, so I didn't want to spend that. Can you recommend a good temp monitor?

[dilettante]

There are many of them out there, but I don't have a favorite. Watch out because a lot install adware or other junk.

[dolot]

... because a lot install adware or other junk.

That's my concern.

[dilettante]

You might create your own simple temp/fan monitor, but you'd probably have to resort to calling the fat and lazy WMI service.

There isn't any standard API defined for such things and even when you can pull the data from the hardware there are no standards for ranges of values and what they indicate.

WMI is a huge "bag of crap" Microsoft had to build that contains tons and tons of rules used to try to profile vendors' hardware to identify it. Then once it "knows" what hardware it is dealing with more tons and tons of rules are used to extract and interpret data.

Anyone making his own non-WMI application has to recreate and apply similar rules of his own.

[dolot]

Fascinating...