up vote 3 down vote favorite
share [g+] share [fb]

My laptop shuts down.

It happened several times so far, and there is a pattern; after I leave it for an hour or so, power saving activates, and then I start using it again for 10 - 15 minutes when it shuts down with no prior warning.

I'm pretty sure that it's not an overheating issue, because I keep it in a fairly cold room, and the laptop is not hot at all after shutting down (it can get much warmer, without shutting down).

I use Windows 7 so that could be the problem, because I never had this problem while using Windows XP. The laptop is an Acer Aspire.

Do you know if there are some settings in Win 7 that can be changed to stop this?

link|improve this question
64% accept rate
does it actually 'shut down' or does it cut off immediately? – Molly7244 Jan 5 '10 at 23:08
Cuts off immediately. – MladenB Jan 5 '10 at 23:15
1  
Could this person who voted -1 please explain why? – MladenB Jan 5 '10 at 23:20
People seem to be quite unforgiving about grammar/spelling errors; I would assume that would be the reason for the downvote. – RJFalconer Jan 5 '10 at 23:28
feedback

1 Answer

up vote 4 down vote accepted

If it cuts off immediately, it is very likely to be an overheating or power problem.

By "power-saving activates" do you mean the fans spin down, etc? If they fail to spin back up again it's perfectly feasible that the CPU will overheat, even in 10-15 minutes in a cold room.

Consider either opening up and cleaning laptop air intakes, or purchasing a can of compressed air to blow out dust.

link|improve this answer
I'm not sure about the fans, I only noticed that screen light becomes darker and then turns black completely (I haven't activated any screensavers). – MladenB Jan 5 '10 at 23:34
3  
i had a laptop that did this too. cleaning it out helped a little, the first time. didn't take long for it to stop helping. to really fix the problem i had to clean off the old crusty thermal paste (from the CPU & heatsink) and apply some fresh. – quack quixote Jan 6 '10 at 0:14
1  
I turned off all those power saving settings, laptop is plugged all the time anyway (battery is 1 year old - almost useless). I postponed the openning of the laptop, I was afraid that I could make things worse, or create another problem. Anyway, this solved problem for now. – MladenB Jan 7 '10 at 18:57
feedback

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown
discard

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.