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I have a Dell Studio 15 notebook, and it just started turning off by itself yesterday.

Could it be that the CPU is too hot? I have had several notebooks before and every one of them I can put them on the bed without any problem. This Dell Studio Notebook, however, seems like have the air / fan outlet pointed outward from the bottom back of the notebook, so I suspect that the air is partially blocked when it is on the bed.

Are there Win 7 tools that can monitor the CPU temperature, or will some 3rd party tool be needed? (I try to stick to official tools nowadays).

Also, it is running Win 7 Ulitmate, there is actually no utility or background service from Win 7 or from Dell that detects when the temperature is too hot (or 95% near the max), pop out a message box giving a warning and say that the computer will go into sleep mode in 1 minute, but instead just turn off the computer by brute force (cutting out the power) right then and there?

Update: it turned off right in front of my eyes -- it is not doing any windows update or anything. just normal use and jooooop, it turned off.

Update 2: the battery is also bad, so when I unplug the power adapter cord, the notebook will turn off right away. So I suspected can the battery be the thing that is causing the "auto turn off". Sure enough, when I unplug the battery from the notebook, the notebook now NEVER turns off by itself. I have had a bad battery from Macbook and Apple replaced the battery for me for free (the battery "auto expanded in size"). I wonder if Dell will do the same even if the notebook is outside the warranty period, if the battery is defective to begin with or had a recall -- they might do it on a "case by case" basis.

3 Answers 3

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Try SpeedFan, it was made for this stuff :)

The turning off is not done in software, it's an emergency, hopefully-should-never-happen, last-ditch total cut-off of power by your motherboard.

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First, double-check the Event Viewer for any errors around that time. You never know when there could be an update that forces a reboot or a driver or something else that is causing your PC to crash.

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IF the problem is related to the CPU temperature and IF the computer turns off automatically (and i mean cutting off as opposed to initiating the regular shutdown procedure) as a protective measure, then you cannot influence this behaviour through the operating system. this is controlled at BIOS level.

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