Laptop randomly switches off! Help!

[Guest]

Hi all. I'm really hoping someone can help me with this. I know virtually
nothing about computers so you're really my only hope before I turn to the
extortionate PC fixing people.

Anyway, I have a Compaq nx9010 laptop. I bought it a year ago (second hand)
and everything seemed to be fine. Then, just after Christmas, it wouldn't
turn on. Well, it turned on OK but didn't make it to the Windows (I had XP)
Start-up screen. It would just crash and lock-up. Anyway, I took my poor
little laptop to the computer hospital and left it there for a couple of
days. They then rang me and said that it had a pirated version of Windows on
which had corrupted itself. Now, I hasten to point out that I didn't know my
Windows was a pirate version and as soon as I found out, I bought a copy of
XP Home Edition, took it to the computer repair shop where they installed it
for me (charging an extra £60 for doing so).

But anyway, since then it's been fine. No problems.

Recently however, since I got back from University, it has started just
shutting itself down. There is no warning, no error messages. It's as if the
power is just cut off. It's not doing it regularly (yet) and there seems to
be no consistant pattern of events that may cause it to crash. The other day
I was watching a DVD when it cut off. Today I was browsing the Internet.

Anyway, I'm worried that when I go back to Uni it's going to cut off right
in the middle of some vital work.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what the problem might be?

Someone here suggested that I might need to reinstall Windows but I've no
idea how to do it and don't want to shell out another £60 to have it
re-installed. Also, if I do reinstall Windows, will my computer still retain
all the files in My Documents?

Thanks for your help,
James.

 

[Guest]

Hi there. Thanks for your help - I found the Power Management icon and
checked the battery status. The battery reads at 100% though my laptop is
kept plugged in almost 100% of the time. It is only ever unplugged when I
need to use the socket for something else. Once I've finished then the laptop
is generally plugged straight back on. It is very rare that I use it off the
battery alone.

Somehow, I managed to get to some kind of self-test running when Windows
starts-up (I went into the DOS setup thing which looked very confusing. I ran
the self-test but didn't adjust any settings as I didn't know what any of
them were). Anyway, after about 40 minutes it said that my Hardrive had
failed the self test (the actual text was "07 FAIL").

Could this be the problem? How would I go about fixing it? And how much is
it likely to cost?

As for the 'blue screen of death', when the laptop goes off, it is as though
the power has literally been completely shut off. It doesn't restart, just
stays off.
Since my initial message however, I have noticed that everytime I try to run
'Spybot - Search and Destroy' (my little Spyware detector) the laptop will
just shut itself off. However, I don't run this every day and even when I
havn't run this, the laptop will still occasionally turn itself off.


Thanks again for your help,
James.

 

[Falcon]

Hi there. Thanks for your help - I found the Power Management icon and
checked the battery status. The battery reads at 100% though my laptop is
kept plugged in almost 100% of the time. It is only ever unplugged when I
need to use the socket for something else. Once I've finished then the laptop
is generally plugged straight back on. It is very rare that I use it off the
battery alone.

Somehow, I managed to get to some kind of self-test running when Windows
starts-up (I went into the DOS setup thing which looked very confusing. I ran
the self-test but didn't adjust any settings as I didn't know what any of
them were). Anyway, after about 40 minutes it said that my Hardrive had
failed the self test (the actual text was "07 FAIL").

Could this be the problem? How would I go about fixing it? And how much is
it likely to cost?

As for the 'blue screen of death', when the laptop goes off, it is as though
the power has literally been completely shut off. It doesn't restart, just
stays off.
Since my initial message however, I have noticed that everytime I try to run
'Spybot - Search and Destroy' (my little Spyware detector) the laptop will
just shut itself off. However, I don't run this every day and even when I
havn't run this, the laptop will still occasionally turn itself off.

Have you checked the internal cooling fan? I had a laptop and pretty
much the same problem, would suddenly shutdown completely, like
pulling the plug. Turned out my cooling fan had stopped working. If
I was doing something which caused a temperature rise like a CPU
intensive process the temp would rise and the thing would shut down
with no warning or indication.

Ciao,
Falcon

 

[Guest]

I can hear the fan whizzing around inside and whenever my laptop is on, the
fan is going all the time - I pretty much leave my laptop plugged in all day
(though it is on standby when I'm not actually using it). The outlet which
blows the hot air out of the laptop does get very hot however and many people
have commented on how warm my laptop is underneath.

Are the fans easy to replace?

 

[Falcon]

I can hear the fan whizzing around inside and whenever my laptop is on, the
fan is going all the time - I pretty much leave my laptop plugged in all day
(though it is on standby when I'm not actually using it). The outlet which
blows the hot air out of the laptop does get very hot however and many people
have commented on how warm my laptop is underneath.

Are the fans easy to replace?

I did not replace mine, I just bought a cooling pad to set it on,
worked great. Most plug into the USB for power but mine also came
with an AC adapter.

 

[Javelin3o4]

I did not replace mine, I just bought a cooling pad to set it
on,
worked great. Most plug into the USB for power but mine also
came
with an AC adapter.

ive seen random shut downs be caused by things such as overheating,
and even bad harddrives.

Does the computer seem to get hotter than usual or than it used to?

 

[Guest]

As far as I can remember it's always been quite warm but since I've been at
Uni and I've asked one of my flatmates to pass my laptop over or something,
they've always commented on how hot it is. A few of them have their own
laptops (which like mine, are often left running all day - just doing our bit
for the environment ) and I've checked to see how warm they get and they're
nothing like mine.

As for your mentioning the hard-drive possibly causing the problem, I ran a
self-check thing through DOS and it did come back saying that that my
hard-drive had failed - it actually said "07 FAIL" but I can't find anywhere
to explain what the 07 means...

Thanks for mentioning the Cooling Pad, Falcon - I'm going to have a look
around and see if I can find one.

 

[Guest]

Hi again. Still looking around for a cooling pad. In the meantime I thought
I'd see what the temperature was where the cooling vent is. Does anyone know
roughly how warm this should get? I have a thermometer (and a compass - you
know, one of those novelty things people bring you back from their holidays)
on my car keyring. I've slid that under my laptop to see how warm it reads
and it comes back at 100 Degrees Fahrenheit / about 40 Degrees Celsius.

Does anyone know if this is abnormally warm or is it about right? It
certainly feels hot and as I've said somewhere else in this topic, other
people have noticed it's very warm as well.