Whenever I run a demanding game on my HP laptop, after a little while, it turns off by itself, quite suddenly
Whenever I run a demanding game like Call of Duty or Godfather on my HP laptop, after a little while, I guess just enough time so the comp gets warm and starts to function at the max, it turns off by itself, quite suddenly. I suppose this is an overheating issue but I’m not sure. I do not know why this is happening suddenly because for about 8 months I have been playing Call of Duty 2 very regularly and for long periods and I have never had this sort of problem before. Perhaps I have too much stuff on the comp which makes things run slower, or perhaps a fan isn’t working properly, I do not know. If you could help me, that would be great.
I think that your guess is correct and your laptop shuts down because of an overheating issue. All computer games push the CPU to its limits and it runs much hotter then during a normal use (not playing games). If the heat sink is clogged with lint and dust, then it will not be able to dissipate all the heat coming from the CPU and the laptop will shut down. The heat sink gets clogged overtime and this is not happening just suddenly. But one day would be a critical day, and the laptop will start to shut down when the CPU is hot. You can easily fix the problem if you clean the heat sink.
If you have a lot of programs running on the background, it will make the laptop slower but it shouldn’t cause the laptop shutdowns.
January 11th, 2007 at 9:09 am
I have an HP laptop that shuts down on its own. I usually leave it on, but every couple of days, at night, it will turn itself off. It does it while i am asleep so I’m not using a demanding program. The only thing that could be running is the scheduled virus scan, but that is every day, and the laptop only turns off maybe every couple of days. It does get very hot but I’ve never had a problem and even have the back propped up to let it have more space to cool off.
January 11th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Jeremy,
Find an air compressor or buy a can of compressed air (you’ll find it in any local computer store) and blow off the heatsink. See if it makes any difference
January 15th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
my laptop was bran-new the hard-drive blew when i was playing zuma i had to dend it back and it did it again si i had to send it back for the second time. it seems to be working better i joined game tap i like the simple games.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:18 am
I have an HP DV4000 18 months old with similar shut off problem described above. It will shutoff more frequently when doing more intensive operations but sometimes with even lightweight stuff. I took in in for testing and they say the cleaned the fan and heat sink and the problem was not there. They reckon it is either a Windows issue (which I doubt) or a new motherboard is needed (which is to expensive $450 quoted). For lack of other options I may have to buy a new machine but this problem seems to be common with many makes and models. Do you have any other suggestions
January 19th, 2007 at 12:15 am
Ryan,
First of all rum memory test (Memtest 86+) and hard drive test (Hitachi drive fitness test). Make sure the cooling fan is working when the CPU is hot. Reinstall Windows just to make sure it’s not software related problem. Check if the laptop has the latest BIOS installed, upgrade it if needed.
January 24th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
I have an Acer Extensa 2500 Notebook (P4 2.8 Ghz, 768 RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 IGP).
I have the same problem as desribed above,since about 5 or 6 months ago; everytime I play a game, it works fine for a while (10-15 minute) then it shut off (not shut down)immediately.
Most of the time, before it went off, I can hear the fan was going faster than normal.
I guess this problem is also related with overheating, but I wonder why it could be happened when my notebook’s fan is seems to be fine (working like it should)? Will it help to clean the fan? or is there any other possible causes? any help will be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
January 25th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
Daniel,
When the cooling fan spins, it sucks up an air (and dust) through the intakes on the bottom of the laptop. After that the air (again with dust) goes through the heat sink. Overtime you can get a thick dust builtup on the heatsink and it prevents normal airflow. As a result the CPU overheats and the laptop shuts down. Here are some examples of clogged heat sinks.
You’ll have to clean up the heat sink, not the fan.
January 30th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
hey ive got a problem like this too with my toshiba satellite m45-s165. in the past few days i have tryed to watch a movie using an s-video cord to my TV. after about 20 minutes or so it decided to shut off all by itself. then i have to wait about 10-15minutes before it will turn back on. after reading some of the posts on yout site, i think it is a overheating problem…only problem is i have no idea how/where to start??
February 1st, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Nate,
It’s very easy to access and clean the heatsink on a Toshiba Satellite M45 notebook, just follow steps 1-6. Remove the heatsink and blow off dust. I would also replace thermal grease on the processor, you can buy it in any local computer store.
February 4th, 2007 at 2:46 am
Hey
I have a very similar problem. My computer is a gateway M285 tablet. It has the X1400 Ati Radeon Mobility graphics card. The computer says it’s a 256 card; however it also says its hyperthreated. My problem is that when I try to run games like age of empires 3 the computer shuts down after a few minutes. I used to have this same problem with Lord of the Rings Battle for Middle earth 2; however it stopped when I started using a cooling fan and turned down the graphics. The same is true for Age of Mythology. For much older games like age of empires 2 the computer won’t even freeze or anything. The graphics card has an option to keep a log when there is a problem. When I activated that option, instead of my computer shutting down it would start freezing during game play and then just pull me out of the game. The error would read “Video card stopped responding so it was restarted.” Any suggestions?
February 9th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
UM yes i just got a new aspire 3690 and it has windows vista and 512mb ddr2 ram and i play world of warcarft when i was instaling world or warcarft it says my ram amount was low ans i clicked ok just beacsue i was dieing to play and when i play if u hold the button to make me turn fast or even if i run fast for a while i will freeze up ans my coomputer will restart most the time i just normally laggin if im not getting restarted do u think that i just need another 512mb ddr2 stick of ram all my friends are telling me tahts y becuase windows vista takes up memory so i prolly have like hardly any ram while im playing.
February 9th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Carl,
I don’t have a lot of experience with Windows Vista yet and I’m not a gamer but 512MB is definitely not enough for this operating system. I would go with another 512MB stick or even more.
February 10th, 2007 at 5:12 am
You should buy some RAM yes. I would prefer 2 GB, and that’s the same amount I have. Vista steals a lot of RAM and leaves very little over for other things. Espacially for applications that demand a lot of memory. 2 GB will make your laptop run like he’s on clouds…
February 10th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Ty, i ordered 512mb ram it is 512mb ddr2 and the stick that is in my computer now is 512mb ddr2 is that what i needed as in will that work and fit.
February 10th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
my friend while playing warcraft or RO, his laptop Acer will turn off harddisk automatic, although he set that never automatic turnoff harddisk or laptop but after about 10minute will turnoff too
can i know wat is te problem?
he said his Ram is 1.49GB, is harddisk to hot?
or heatsink got dust?
February 11th, 2007 at 11:51 am
Hey can u tell me how to se up my acer for no auto shutoff
February 11th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
I bought a new lap top. When I go to MyHPGames the message says:
Configexe error
error line 0 column 0
I do not know where to go to refresh the site.
Thank you.
February 11th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Leongai,
What do you mean by this? The laptop shuts down completely by itself or what? Maybe the laptop overheats? Check the heat sink and if it’s clogged clean it.
February 11th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
ashey wooten,
How about other sites, they work properly? If you use IE6 or IE7 browser, you can refresh by pressing F5 or go to View tab and then click on Refresh. I think there could be an error on the website and it’s not your fault.
February 14th, 2007 at 8:23 am
I have an HP Pavilion dv8000 and I’m going to attempt to clean it myself. It’s still under 1yr warranty but I do NOT want to wait 3-6 weeks for it to be ‘fixed’. Where do I find the heatsink? Are there any guides/images out there for me to follow? Thanks!
February 15th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Ramsey,
I think you cannot access the heat sink from the bottom of the laptop on this model, it’s necessary to take the whole think apart and remove the motherboard. Download a maintenance and service guide for HP Pavilion dv8000 notebook PC and you’ll find step-by-step disassembly instructions in the Removal and Replacement Procedures chapter.
I wouldn’t open up the laptop if it’s still under warranty.
You also can use an air compressor to blow off the heat sink and fans through the air intakes on the bottom.
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:45 pm
I have 2 Gateway 450SX4’s and they both heat up so bad they shutdown after 15 to 20 minutes. I use a program to monitor the temperature and it shows FIRE after 60 degrees C. Does anyone know how to fix this. I chabged the heatsink and fan assemblies on both computers and they still do the same thing. DO I have to hotwire the fan to keep them cool ??? Or … does anyone know where the heat sensor is ?
Thank you in advance for any response.
Little dick
July 2nd, 2007 at 9:45 am
I have a problem with my laptop shutting off by itself unexpectedly. I own an HP laptop, it used to have a big overheating problem but after I cleaned the fan, the problem seemed to be fixed. But in the past few months, my laptop started shutting off again, overheating can be one of the possibilities, but sometimes when it shuts off, the laptop doesn’t seem hot enough to considered overheated. Sometimes it shuts off when i just turned it on for less than 5 mins. I rarely run demanding programs on my computer. Although the problem does not happen too often, but just the fact that it happened concerns me. I cant find any patterns for this to happen. could it be power surge? (my computer has problems with the usb’s) any suggestions?
October 30th, 2007 at 6:10 am
my compaq prersario laptop with 1.24 gb ram plays games for around 30 min or more sometimes n then shuts off itself suddenly n i can also hear the fan running or should i say SOUND faster b4 shut off….i got new heat sink got the fan cleaned but the prob continues…..n same with all video encoding softwares…..why is it so?
October 30th, 2007 at 6:13 am
i guess it has got sumthin 2 do with the motherboard…..a new machine might solve the prob but this prob shouldn’t be there atall!we pay heavily for a lappi n peanuts 4 a pc gives betta service! this is aweful really….any1 know any remedy?
October 30th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
help!! how come my hp laptop pav.dv6000 shuts down in the middle of a game…such as nba live 06 or gta….i only played 5 mins.. then it shutsdown unexpectedly…
October 30th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
im using a cool pad too…so over heating is not d problem…
October 31st, 2007 at 4:56 am
the problem seemsa common for laptops only…grrr……seems we hv 2 use pc for games …OLLRYTTTT!!!
November 3rd, 2007 at 10:28 am
can a virus (such as f**g trojan family) shut down a laptop or pc?
November 5th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
Hey Laptop Freak;
I have an Acer Aspire 3620 that I bought a year and a half ago that keeps switching off, even when the battery is fully charged or if I’ve plugged it into the wall.
I was playing a computer game yesterday, and I was saving the game before intending to turn the laptop off. Whilst the game was saving, my laptop switched off on its own – I’m sure the battery hadn’t completely run out (a “Windows is now hibernating” screen usually appears) when this happened. I turned my laptop on this morning to see that dreaded “File missing or corrupted.. SYSTEM32″ screen, and now I’m at risk of losing all my files and programs because all my battery cut out. I’ve since found a way to recover them, but my laptop won’t let me as it keeps spontaneously shutting off! Please help me solve this problem, it would be very much appreciated.
November 8th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
Kay,
Take a look at the cooling fan and the heat sink. Do you see a lot of dust inside the heat sink? Try cleaning it with compressed air. It sound’s like your laptop switching off because it’s getting hot. Clean the heat sing and see if the problem still exists.
By the way, you can back up all personal files if you remove the hard drive, install it into an external USB enclosure and then connect to another working computer. The hard drive will appear in My Computer where you can access it and back up files.
November 12th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
hey i finally sorted out this problem!!!!!what i got was tht it was due 2 overheating although my fan is clean n perfect n so is the heat sink…i just made sure that the laptop’s 2 corners are placed on two heavy books(brick like structure so as 2 allow spacing under the laptop) now the fan is open as the laptop doesn’t rest on a surface and it ets very less heated and i have been able 2 play or encode as much as i want it has worked like magic for me!!!!try it yourself too
November 17th, 2007 at 9:39 am
help!!! my laptop shuts down only when im playing a game like nba live 06…3 to 5 mins b4 it shuts down…its not the heat sink or the fan ive alrdy checked it out,,,i hv a coolpad too..i just bought this last april..do i hve a corrupt file? or do i hv a trojan virus thats keepin me from playin..and sometimes in does’nt turn on…or hp laptops really suck..it doesn’t even hv a cd installer unlike the acer lptop im using b4 so im helpless..i cant format the hrddisk…another thing is im using an italian version of windows vista…
November 24th, 2007 at 12:27 am
hey i finally sorted out this problem!!!!!what i got was tht it was due 2 overheating although my fan is clean n perfect n so is the heat sink…i just made sure that the laptop’s 2 corners are placed on two heavy books(brick like structure so as 2 allow spacing under the laptop) now the fan is open as the laptop doesn’t rest on a surface and it ets very less heated and i have been able 2 play or encode as much as i want it has worked like magic for me!!!!try it yourself too
December 1st, 2007 at 12:51 am
OMG, I have the same problem. I have an acer travelmate 2420, and I’ve had it for a year now. It started to shut off unexpectedly not long after purchasing it. I don’t have it packed with programs, and it does it sometimes when I’m not using a big program. The computer screen seems to flash, and the hard drive made a sudden scratch noise and it shut off. It’s really wiered, and it can’t be good for the computer
December 17th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
*** NOTICE FOR HP CONSUMERS ***
HP laptops are apparently suffering from many overheating issues. This includes several different models. The symptoms seem to largely center around either the laptop turning itself off suddenly (sometimes no longer even starting up again), or the wireless card no longer being detected.
I am compiling complaints from HP consumers to submit as a report to HP, as well as to distribute to media centers, retailers etc. HP has refused to disclose the nature of the problem, and has been less than particularly helpful to the many users with these issues.
Please send the following information to hp.consumers@gmail.com:
- Your name
- Your location
- Your model
- Your problem
- Your experience with HP in finding a solution
Please, every single e-mail will be a of tremendous assistance in putting public pressure on HP.
Thank you for your time, and feel free to contact me,
Fausto Rodriguez
January 27th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
HP Pavillion dv 8301. Same overheating problem. Sent to Geek Squad. Nightmares. They are incompetent. Still same problem. Took laptop apart. Not much lint-dust but what we found is that the heat sink compound between the cpu and the cooling system was dry and not conducting heat very well. Radio shack has tube of lube for under $4. Cleaned and reassembled-no more problems however still getting too hot.
I have Dell laptop and got free utility on web to change speed of fan. The HP fan is running too slow and do not know how to force high speed. When watching videos, have seen 95 deg C. Should never go above 65 or 70. Is there a utility to change speed of fan ?
January 27th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Frostie,
If you have HP software loaded on your laptop check the control panel. It’s possible that you have some kind of HP power management utility where you can change the laptop performance mode. I’ve seen this on some Toshiba laptops where you can change performance from “Quiet” mode to “Performance” mode where the cooling fan works faster and turns on more often.
Also, check the BIOS setup menu. Maybe you’ll find some settings for fan in there.
February 10th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
I have an HP DV5000 20 months old with shut off problem described above. It will shutoff suddenly when doing more intensive operations such as playing heavy games or running too many programs at the same time on the other hand it will keep running for days if no heavy programs are used. I took it in for testing and they say they cleaned the fan and heat sink and the problem was not there. They reckon i need to change the motherboard(which is too expensive $450 quoted). i dont think that is the problem i still think it is overheating because the problem started when i had left the laptop on my bed while playing a heavy game. For lack of other options I may have to buy a new machine but this problem seems to be common with many makes and models. Do you have any suggestions?
February 11th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
hp dv2120ca overheats, cant even run flash for long.
hp you suck!
i talked to them and they gave me a bios upgrade.
changed the geforce 6150 memory from 256 shared to 128 shared . umm thanks?
anyways this thing is garbage.
the caps lock light flashes after its overheated.
the end.
March 9th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Hey L.F.
I have an HP Dv8000 and I am having a lot of problems with the fan making noise and the laptop shutting down while playing games. I know its a bad bearing in the fan and I dont want to send it in to HP or even have them come to me. Is there a guide to disassembling this model so I can change the fan myself?
Thanks in advance!!! Great site btw.
March 10th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Hey Matt,
Yes, you can change the fan yourself. It’s not easy but possible.
You’ll find my suggestions in this post:
Fan on my HP laptop making noise. Can I change the fan myself?
April 21st, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Hey,
I have the same problem as most of you guys, have a Pavillion DV4000, had it for around 2 years, bit less, and randomly it just Powers Off, it is out of warranty now, but cost a fortune when i bought it and as a student i be-grudge buying a new one! Had it to a repair shop, he fiddled with the underneath bits (haha, not very technical) then told me he had had loads of HP Pc’s in with the exact same problem. He said he couldn’t fix it as he thought it was the motherboard and this would cost a fortune, there nothing we can do to get HP to do something, it clearly is a fault!!! x
April 21st, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Hannah,
Did you try cleaning fans and heatsink? Buy compressed air and spray it inside the heatsink, blow off the dust. It might help.
August 20th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Heh, this “random shut off” problem seems to be very commong among laptops. I’m with Hannah. I have the same problem with the same laptop (HP Pavilion dv4000). Had it for around 2+ years as well. The problem started a couple of weeks ago. I was watching a video online when it suddenly shut off. It doesn’t always happen when I’m watching online vids though. I also noticed that when I’m running a game (which I have played for several years w/o this problem), it will definitely shut off after maybe 5-10 minutes. I’ll take a look at the fans and heatsink first. But if that doesn’t work, it’s going to suck
August 29th, 2008 at 4:59 am
My laptop is a Toshiba Satellite A200 and it’s about a year old. It also shuts down randomly, it has done it a few times but usually all that is running is the internet or msn- not games or lots of windows. I’ll also have a look at the fans I guess but everyone else seems to have problems when running games and such when I am not…
September 2nd, 2008 at 5:10 am
I’ve got an HP Pavilion dv9000 which was sent back because of overheating, they rebuilt it, replaced pretty much everything (even the screen cover!) it STILL overheats and the DVD player shuts down randomly. Sticking it on one of those elcheapo fan pads helped considerably. Noisy as heck, but does cool it enought to keep it running.
October 27th, 2008 at 5:19 am
Jeff, how did you get them to rebuild it for you? I am having trouble getting it sent back to them, BIOS upgrade was all i got.
December 20th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
We have four Gateway MX3702 notebooks and ALL of them have sudden shutdown problems. I emailed their customer service and they want me to do full system restore, which I know won’t work because I just fully restored one of the computers already and it didn’t help. Is there a breakdown guide for cleaning the heatsink and fan and replacing the paste? Also, my fan specifically is making a high pitched whine when it spins up to full speed AND isn’t getting good airflow, is the bearing starting to fail, or will cleaning it help?
January 2nd, 2009 at 2:05 pm
That vacume thing worked ! i used a vacume cleaner to clean out all the dust in the fan and now there is no sound at all! before it was really loud and now it is like i got it wich was 8 months ago thanks alot now i can play counterstrike again without a fu**ing shutdown after 15 minutes !!!
March 6th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
hello
after i change my laptop motherboard now when i am playing flight simulator my laptop is going to turn off automatically please help me in this
June 2nd, 2009 at 3:01 am
my sony vaio laptop (VGN-CS60B) also shut down by itself. and i’m having turning it on. after using it for 10-20 minutes it will shut down again… it pissed me off!
thanks for this site… it gave me ideas on how to fix this problem…
June 2nd, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Hi,
I opened up my HP DV5250US laptop to clean the heat sink. There was a lot of dust blocking the entry of air. I reassembled the laptop and the sound has gone down. But the problem is, I think I messed up something during reassembly. The laptop boots fine in Windows SAFE MODE, but when I turn it on in Normal mode, it turns off when the cool Windows 7 UI tries to come up(before the login screen itself). Do you think I misplaced the heat sink/fan on the processor/video processor? I spent about 5 hours on it yesterday, so want to find out full details before going in for another disassembly + reassembly.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:53 am
I have an HP DV2550EE and i replaced the motherboard with a new one and that was because the VGA was overheating and the laptop keep restarting it selfs on the safemode only.
I still have this problem even so and i have a believe that it caused because the design of the new HP laptop where the processor doesn’t have enough air to be cooled specially that my CPU is Intel Dual Core 2.
July 20th, 2009 at 5:17 am
hi, i hav a HPdv6000. had it fr bout a yr n a half. now suddenly since the past few couple o months my laptop will jst shut down on its on. i think it gets heated up or something. because this wudnt happen when i used a cooling pad under it. bt today it even happened with the cooling pad on. i formatted my laptop recently cz of this, but the problem persists. iv been reading about the heatsink cleaning, which seems to be the issue after reading the othr posts. bt im not sure how i shud go about doing it? and is there any othr way of cleaning it without using compressed air? id really appreciate ur help man cz i really love my laptop!
thanx..
September 15th, 2009 at 8:42 am
I have HP laptop..and the backlight keeps turning off…but the programs are still running,,,i can see everything in the screen..but the light is not there…it is really annoying..what should i do?? whats the cause of this problem??
September 30th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Bcklight issue is most likely just the inverrter board. replace that and should work…. if not that then will most likely be the lamp itself
March 4th, 2010 at 7:23 am
halla. i have an acer 5738G, bot it in nov 09. i got the same prob of shutting down while plaing demanding games. i tried to do a windows memory diagnostics test and it shut off automatically there too even at 10%. is it a mem prob??
May 24th, 2010 at 3:38 am
I have an hp dv4000. I’ve had it for about 5 years. This laptop is my life. However, it is constantly overheating and shutting off. Sometimes I’m unable to recover work I was working on. This is getting really frustrating. I’ll try the compressed air in the fan area and see if it helps. Clearly, hp is doing something wrong if this is as common as it seems. If it doesn’t work, do I need to replace the heat sink or fan? Thanks!