Laptop Shuts Off

[salem]

HP laptop, maybe 5 years old. When I turn it on after abut five minutes it will completely shut down and then reboot. Sometimes it will do it more than once as I'm trying to read something. Is it time for the shop or a new unit? Anything I can do on this end?

[travisc]

Laptops have thermal sensors in several locations, if things get to hot the bios shuts them down, at the age of the laptop, the air is the first solution the second would be thermal grease around the cpu and heat sink, sometimes that gets dried out.

[whjco]

Is the cooling fan working? Have you tried blowing some canned air/compressed air through the cooling fins? It could be overheating.

[mr__ed]

joebedford wrote:

cavie wrote:
5 year old laptop. might be time to start looking for a new one.

Mine is 11 years old. Just fine for light use.

My trusty Toshiba laptop is about the same age as yours, perhaps older (I forget when I purchased it, but I know it’s been quite some time ago). So what you say is correct, a laptop can last a long time if treated properly. When a problem arises, I merely reset the operating system and seems to be good as new. 😉

[salem]

I'll pick up a can first chance I get. Thanks.

[theoldwizard1]

BobsYourUncle wrote:
My old laptop started shutting down due to overheating. And it did it very soon after booting up.

Buy a spray can of compressed air. Blow it trough all of the vents. It could just be dust causing an overheat condition.

Do this at least once/year.

[enblethen]

Blow the whole computer out with a can of compressed air.
May attention to the fan and dive areas. Some hard drives need to have cover removed. Blow out the ram chip compartment.

[Bumpyroad]

joebedford wrote:

cavie wrote:
5 year old laptop. might be time to start looking for a new one.

Mine is 11 years old. Just fine for light use.

yep, same here

bumpy

[joebedford]

cavie wrote:
5 year old laptop. might be time to start looking for a new one.

Mine is 11 years old. Just fine for light use.

[BobsYourUncle]

My old laptop started shutting down due to overheating. And it did it very soon after shooting up.

Put your hand on the bottom after it shuts down, check to see if it's hot.

On mine the fan heat sink on the CPU lost it's contact due to the thermal grease drying out and going away.

[1492]

A motherboard component failure can also cause laptop to randomly shutdown/reboot? Try running the laptop in WIN10 (?) Safe Mode, and see if it still exhibiting the same issue?

I would recommend going into 'Event Viewer' and look at Windows logs for errors at the time of the shutdown/reboots? Though may be confusing to decipher if not used to reading such errors? In fact, I created a custom view in mine that basically filters for errors to quickly view any issues?

[cavie]

5 year old laptop. might be time to start looking for a new one.

[salem]

Thanks all. That gives me place to start.

[MrWizard]

Check to see if the CPU fan is blowing
This could be an Over temp problem

Also remove the battery and power it only from the power supply as a test

[navigator2346]

Might it be installing some updates? Machines will often shut itself down and restart a couple of times while installing updates