After I disassembled and cleaned the heatsink my laptop, it shuts down even faster then before cleaning
My Toshiba Satellite P35 laptop is giving me a real headache lately. It shuts down whenever I start using some video editing programs like Adobe Premiere or Ulead Media etc. I know they require a lot of memory that’s why I ordered another GB, now my Ram is 1.5 GB. Nevertheless it continued shutting down that’s when I started reading posts from other users and found out that it’s a common problem with Toshiba Laptops. Yesterday I disassembled it and cleaned the heat sink (to tell you the truth it was really dusty
). However today when I tried to turn on the computer it would shut down even when I’m not using any editing software, it shuts down after 5 minutes or so. I am pretty sure I connected everything back as it was before; I double checked every wire meticulously.
I’d really appreciate if you’d give me an advice; I have a couple of video projects to finish soon.
I think it’s possible that you forgot to connect the fan assembly cables to the motherboard. The fan assembly has 2 fans and 2 separate cables that you have to plug in into the motherboard. You can do that only when the system board is removed from the base, there is no access from the bottom of the laptop. I’ve done it myself many times. Turn on the laptop and listen if fans are spinning. I believe that both fans have to start spinning as soon as you turn on the laptop. If they not spinning then either the fan assembly is bad or it’s disconnected.
Here’s another suggestion. If you removed the heatsink from the CPU, did you reapply thermal grease on the processor? A few month ago a received a similar email from one guy and he experienced the same problem after he cleaned up his laptop. It happened because he removed old thermal grease, but never applied new grease. He assembled the laptop without any grease between the CPU and the heatsink. The problem was fixed as soon as he reapplied thermal grease.
September 22nd, 2008 at 9:42 pm
SK,
1. Try reseating the memory module.
2. Check the CPU. Make sure the socket is LOCKED.
I posted your question here: My laptop will not boot after I opened it up and cleaned the heatsink
Please let us know if you figure out the problem.
September 22nd, 2008 at 10:20 am
Hiya,
I had a problem with my Dell smart pc 250N of overheating and shutting off after half an hour or so. I searched over the net and as per instructions on a web site opened up the laptop, cleaned the heatsink and the cpu and applied arctic silver thermal grease to the CPU and reassembled everything, thinking that everything would be fine now! To my horror now the laptop would not boot up!
as far as i am aware i have not damaged anything knowingly, the cpu seems to fit in the slots well and have tightened the heat sink well.
what do you think has gone wrong and what is the solution? If it is a goner then how can i retrieve the tons of files from my hard drive that i foolishly did not back up before trying this stunt.
will appreciate your comments.
thanks
SK
July 30th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Hi all I need some help. I have an Alienware Aurora m9700 laptop at first it would shut down after about 5-10 minutes of playing a demanding application like a game so after searching for a solution i removed the heatsinks and fans and cleaned them out. There was alot of dust but I got it all out.
Now when I start it up it the fans will come on but with irregular speeds and then it will turn itself off after about a minute even if I don’t touch it at all. When I removed the fans and heatsink I think I broke the thermal paste, at least thats what I think the gray sold on the bottom of the copper coloured bars are, and I haven’t got any. My question is if I replace that thermal paste will it solve my problem as everything was fine before then.
Thanks alot,
Chris.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Hi all
I am an ex-Toshiba laptop repair man, with regard the the P10 – P15 – P20 – P35 laptops, these all suffered with dry joints on a couple of chips on the motherboard caused by the sheer weight and lifting the laptop by one side only, this has caused the board to flex and eventually the chipset, graphics and chipset chips develop an intermittant contacts / dry joints.
This problem sometimes shows up as a heat issue as after half an hour the laptop would shut down all by it’s self, I have seen meny actually turned them selves on when the board / chips cool and make contact again as well!
The heat causes the differant materials used inside the motherbard, chips and solder to expand at differant rates and if you have the already intermittant connection the problem is made visible, just a simple reconnect can cause the PSU circuit to think you have pressed the power button.
Unfortunataly these are not resolderable unless you have the 2 milion pound unit that mounts these BGA (Ball Grid Array, soldered to board with small solder balls under neith) chips to the main board upon manufacture. either put up with it, find the sweet spot and apply perminant pressure somehow or sell it for parts.
I have BER’ed (beyond Echonomical Repair) literally 1000′s of laptops because of this as you can buy a new one for the cost of rework / repair of a faulty board.
One possible way it may be fixable is to apply liquid flux to the BGA chips (to aid solder reflow) and with a hot air gun (paint stripper gun) heet the underside of the board (under the chip) untill the solder reflows / resolders it’s self to chip and board, without cooking the mainboard, just do not move / hit it when hot as other chips ect will fall off / move, you have nothing to loose, kill or cure!
This type of fault is not just on Toshiba, every make has at some point had to deal with this issue and alter design to stop mainboard flex.
CPU, RAM, HDD, LCD, CD / DVD drive will all be fine the fault is the mainboard.
I have only seen 2 duff intel CPU’s ever in 10 years!
AMD’s are a differant story.
Hope this offers an insight on whats happening.
Steve.
March 4th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Aldo,
Only if you can find a cheap replacement and can install it yourself. If you take this laptop to a repair shop, you’ll have to pay about $150 for diagnostic/repair plus $250-300 for a new (probably refurbished) motherboard. I don’t know how much you paid for your laptop but these days you can buy a new one very cheap, plus you get one year warranty.
March 4th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
if it is the motherboard, in your experience…is it work trying to fix it?
March 4th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Aldo,
If the video card is integrated into the motherboard, you cannot disconnect it.
I would suspect the motherboard. From my experience, if the CPU is damaged, the laptop will not boot at all. CPU failures are not very common.
March 4th, 2008 at 6:04 am
If CPU or MOTHERBOARD is damaged, would it still boot up normally…because it does until it shuts down.
When I first disassembled the laptop to check it, I found that the all the cooling fan tips/arms had broken off and were scattered within the computer….never seen that before.
It reacts as there is a short circuit somewhere within the laptop.
March 4th, 2008 at 5:58 am
I have minimized the laptop, same results.
I replaced the heatsink and the cooling fan, with brand new Toshiba parts, assembled laptop, and then disassembled to make sure they were in position and working properly, they were.
Is there a way to test the Video Card or disconnect it from the motherboard?
Yes, even if in the Bios menu, computer still shuts down after 40 seconds or so…
March 3rd, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Aldo,
You can try to minimize the laptop as much as possible, remove everything and disconnect all devices. Leave only main components: motherboard, CPU with the cooling module, memory and probably the power button board. If the laptop still shuts down after some number of seconds, apparently either the motherboard or the CPU has been damaged. I don’t know what else could be wrong.
I assume you’ve checked the heatsink and it’s properly attached to the CPU, right? It’s not the memory issue because you’ve tested the laptop with each memory module.
I don’t know if your Satellite A100 has a discrete video card (in A105 it’s integrated into the motherboard). The video card also could cause this problem.
By the way, what if you enter the BIOS setup menu and leave the laptop in there for a while? Will it shut down too, even you are in the BIOS menu?
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:37 pm
The fan works fine, it spins normally…at start up and during the time I have before it shuts down.
I did remove the HD, and booted up, same results, shuts down after same number of seconds. Even if the computer is idle, still shuts down after same number of seconds. Also tried removing the memory modules, one at a time and together, same results..shuts down. I also removed the screen, DVD, and unplugged all but literally the power connection and fan from motherboard and booted up, same results…shuts down after same seconds. I even unplugged the fan then booted up, same thing, same results.
I know Toshiba has an auto shut off sequence for safety reasons when the laptop gets to hot, while doing my back-up I do remember it being very hot, but did not shut down by itself, I hit the power button because the screen was frozen, since then….it just shuts off at every start up.
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Aldo,
This problem still could be related to overheating. Listen for the cooling fan, is it working fine all the time? Does it spin before the laptop shuts down?
Make sure the fan is plugged into the motherboard. Maybe you forgot to connect the fan?
Test memory with Memtest86+. Run diagnostic test for the hard drive, you can use Hitachi’s driver fitness test.
Try this. Remove the hard drive and try entering the BIOS setup menu while the hard dive is unplugged. Does the laptop still shut down?
If you have two memory modules installed try removing them one by one and test the laptop with each memory module in each memory slot separately.
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Troy,
Get a copy of Linux SUSE, Linux Mandriva, or any other distribution. Burn it on a CD/DVD and boot your laptop from this media. Follow the wizard.
Personally, I’m stuck with Knoppix. It has all the tools I need.
March 3rd, 2008 at 5:20 pm
I have a Toshiba Satillite A100 (2 years), while doing a straight copy back-up, it froze, so I hit the power button to reboot, ever since then when I turn it on, it shuts down every time no matter where you go, i.e. F2, F12, (boot meuu), Set up menu, etc. or just starting windows normally. It shuts off after only 35-40 seconds everytime.
I figured it was an over-heating issue and replaced the cooling fan and the heatsink, applied new grease, but it still does the exact same thing, shuts off after 35-40 seconds. I even tried reinstalling windows with its own boot disk, but just turns off after same number of seconds.
Could it be a Bios issue? or maybe motherboard is damaged? I can’t even get into safe mode, doesn’t give me enough time.
Any ideas?
Thanks!!
February 11th, 2008 at 2:17 am
Regarding my other comment, this next post may need to be moved, but I didn’t want you to post my first comment since the shut down issue has been resolved!! Please read this also!!
So, after reading a few more posts I d/l’d and burned the ISO for Knoppix. I was SUPER IMPRESSED! I have never used anything like this and it was full of open source free stuff! Since the LT seems to be working great now (is actually blowing cool air out the vents!) I would like to set it up on Linux instead of trying to go on with Win XP. As stated before, I have a new HD in there – I only have 20 GB formatted as NTFS, and the rest is not formatted. Can you recommend where to go to determine how to get a Linux based system running on this laptop and how to get the HD formatted to run it?!?!? Thanks again for any help! Knoppix is incredible!!
February 11th, 2008 at 12:38 am
Hi LTF,
First off, THANK YOU!! I have been “lucky” enough to pick up a couple of Toshiba laptops *cheap* at estate sales lately and I have used your guides for taking apart and cleaning the heat sinks, etc. YOUR GUIDES ARE INVALUABLE – THANKS!! But, enough sucking up…heh heh heh…
One of the LT’s I picked up was a 2405-S201 (only $10!!). I bought a new AC adapter for it (and tested it after reading numerous posts tonight) – it seems to be fine. The LT worked for a while when I first got it, then it started shutting down. In trying to figure things out, the HD went bad (kept giving BSOD and would not boot). I bought a new HD, but the LT will not stay on long enough to load XP – decided to crack it open.
Used your guide, heatsink was a MESS. Cleaned everything (HS and CPU), applied Arctic Silver Ceramique to the black area on top of the CPU, put everything back together and it still shuts down after about 5 mins. I can’t keep it on long enough to install XP.
HELP!! I have the keyboard pulled and can see the fan is working. I’m not sure how to tell the CPU temp. Brand new HD (but no OS). I /did/ buy some memory and have it installed as well – is there a way to test it without being able to boot up – could that be the issue? I can boot from the CD and start the windows install, but it always shuts down.
Any help appreciated! I hope YOU are appreciated for helping so many people free of charge!! I know without your guides I never could have done it – THANKS AGAIN!!
February 4th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Saem,
If your 6100 started doing that, most likely it’s time to buy a new laptop. I’ve seen many many 6100 laptops and most of them fail like that. Here are a few things to try. I don’t know if you want to do this repair yourself because it requires laptop disassembly and you can make it even worse.
1. Remove the keyboard and carefully push the video card back into the slot on the motherboard. Overtime the video card tends to pop up from its connector on the motherboard. It’s possible there is connection issue between the video card and the motherboard.
2. Remove the top cover assembly and reseat the power board. Make sure it’s making a good contact with the motherboard.
If nothing helps, don’t waist your money for fixing this lappy and buy a new one.
February 1st, 2008 at 12:22 pm
hi i have toshiba 6100 pro it suts off 1 hours or sometimes 2.5 hrs and power light which is soild green in normal goes yellow and blinks if i unplug power then put back sure it gets green as soon i turn on its same yellow and bliking so if i w8 5 to 10 min its ok for another 1 or 2 hours or if i want quick i put in freezer and withn 3 or 4 minute im redy to so any good idea plz thank you
February 16th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
I followed the instructions on this site to clean the heatsink in my Toshiba Satellite P20/P35. After I put it back together and pressed the power button, the fans began spinning but nothing happened. The hard drive light didn’t come on, the monitor didn’t come on … and then the fans stopped spinning. So, I took it apart again and checked to make sure I had reconnected everything correctly. Hit the power button and the same thing happened. Help … please?
February 5th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Hi,
I have a Compaq Presario 2178cl. About a year ago it started overheating, and when I would run several applications at a time, with the speakers, USB ports and CD drive in action as well, it would shut down by itself, without any warnings.
About a month ago I took it apart to clean the fan. To my surprise, it was quite clean. So the next step was to apply thermal paste. Once I reassembled it I would shut off within 5 minutes, so I haven’t even been able to load the factory restore CDs. Then I thought it may be the CPU… but I replaced my Athlon XP 2400 with a 2100 and it wouldn’t even power up: the lights would go on for a second, that’s it. I went back to the 2400… again, only 1 second, and nothing else. So I removed the speakers because they were short-circuiting (I noticed the cables were melted together), and then it would power up, but still die after 5 minutes… the fan is spinning, but the heat sink gets hot.
I do not know what else can cause this, I obviously must’ve done something wrong the first time I opened it up, since that’s when it got worse. Should I replace the motherboard? The symptoms are the same, whether I leave the battery in, or I only use the AC adapter.
Please help. Any suggestions are welcome.
Anita
January 10th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Frank,
). It’s possible the coating inside the hole is broken and both sides on the motherboard will not make a good contact.
You’ll find a discussion related to the laptop power jack issues on laptoprepair101.com. I think your problem still could be related to power jack. I don’t work a lot with Compaq laptops but I’ll guess. It’s possible that the motherboard in your laptop has two layers; it has electrical traces on both sides of the motherboard. You purchased a new power jack and installed it instead the old one. You put the new jack into the holes on the motherboard and then soldered pins on the opposite side, right? It’s possible that the “+” trace on one side of the motherboard (where you soldered the power jack contacts) must contact to the “+” on the opposite side and they contact through the trace (like a coating) that goes inside the hole (Man! My limited English just kills me
January 9th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
Happy New Year! Yeah, I know we’re 9 days into it, but am trying to have a better outlook on life…
Any hue…
Here’s the dig…
Compaq Presario 2140US running Windows XP with all updates etc. About 6 months ago I replaced the power supply jack on the MOBO because of intermittent issues of power…cable and battery were fine. Everything went perfect and was running fine until wife tripped over power cord and jerked the cable. This in turn dislodged my wonderful solder job of the new power jack and entitled me to fix it once again! That seemed to go well a second time. However, the wife later complained that she was having to move the power cord to keep power charging the battery.
Just the other day I R&R’d the recent power jack and resoldered another in its place. Power came on and was charging and seemed fine once again. I even swapped power cables and was doing the wiggle trick to see if perhaps the cables were shot. No problems.
Now I am told that my handy work did not do the trick. The laptop will not go to full charge (yellow light stays on constantly) and wife has had instances of it shutting down for no reason. I am wondering if 1) the battery is on the outs and needs a new one OR 2) the mobo or CPU are going south??? I have not tried doing the discharge of the caps trick, so may do that…but not sure if it will help. I’m fairly handy with PC’s and laptops, just don’t do it for a living outside of the home.
Oh yeah, I remembered to re-paste the cpu and heatsink…I’m wondering if I have excess on that may be shorting it out??? But that still doesn’t solve the power problem…
Any thoughts??
December 29th, 2006 at 7:13 pm
oooh sorry it is a gateway, I had 3 laptops as well forgot which one was it hahaha
anywayz yeah… I sent them back to fix it but they couldnt find the problem they sent me back with $45 of cost with the letter
STATUS: FINE
I was like yeah bss….
anyway about the decoding problem…hmm it runs other process takes more ram and more stuff etc… fan spins fine, only the video decoding messed it up I dont know why?
I even play games on it sometimes tooo
December 28th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
Son,
Are you sure it’s not a Gateway tablet PC?
From this description it’s hard to say what is wrong. It could be just a loose cable somewhere inside the laptop or a faulty motherboard. Does the laptop turn off when it runs on AC power or it happens only when it runs from the battery? Try this. Remove the battery, plug the AC adapter, start the laptop and knock slightly on the hard drive area. It still shuts down even without battery installed?
Check if the memory module is seated properly, reseat it just in case.
Could be a heat related issue. Make sure the heatsink is clean and the cooling fan spins. Clean the heatsink with compressed air if it’s clogged.
December 27th, 2006 at 10:34 pm
S7200-C Toshiba tablet laptop
2 GB ram
2.13 gHz Intel Centrino
hi guys I had experienced 2 of the following
1) my laptop turn off (completely unless I remove battery and restack it) whether I knock slightly on the hard drive area (however I had checked and remove the hard drive, yet the problem still occurs)
2) my laptop now turn off when I use video decoding like Nero, WinAvi, any type of video decoding, it will turn off after 5 or 10 mins or so
pleeeease help
I really appreciate for ur time to read
Son.
December 15th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
First, thanks for the quickly reply
.
Yesterday I decided to reproduce in a more accurate way the error (prior make a call to Thosiba Support guys), and for my surprise I was unable to reproduce de error in Windows, and finally I found the reason: I have Ubuntu 6.10 installed on my laptop, and Windows XP, but I normally use Linux. It seems that Ubuntu has a bug that has problems with cpu scaling frequency and cooling (bug 22336,https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bug/22336).
The reason for my ‘impression’ that Windows has the same problem is because normally, I use Linux over 2 or 3 hours, and after that I use windows. The over-heat generated by linux-use make windows to fail in the same way. This evening I used ‘cpuburn’ package software, 10 instances of this sofware plus video decoding program and no error…
Tomorrow I will ‘downgrade’ to Ubuntu 6.06 until Ubuntu guys fix this ‘heat’ problem.
Thanks!
December 15th, 2006 at 2:40 pm
Jose,
You are right, if the same problem occurs in Windows and Linux, it’s not OS related. Make sure that you have the latest BIOS installed. Test memory with Memtest 86+ and hard drive with Hitachi DFT (from my experience it works fine with most hard drives).
December 14th, 2006 at 12:20 am
Hi,
First, forgiveme for my poor english. I’m having similar problem with my brand new Toshiba A110-180. Laptop ran without problems, but 1 week ago laptop started to reboot without reason. In my case laptop reboot’s when playing video in full-screen mode (and
I remember one time in windowed mode). Sometimes reboots occurs as soon as i start playback, and other the problem occurs 1 hour later. The problem
has nothing to do (in my opinion) with OS because
the problem arises in Windows and Linux. In all
cases I can´t find causes in system logs (None in
Linux syslog neither in Windows EventViewer). Any suggestion?
Thanks in advance
December 6th, 2006 at 1:19 am
I own a Acer Travelmate 4150. This is NOT an overheating issue. Recently, it has started to shut off during games, or when I’m running multiple applications for a long amount of time. I thought it was overheating, so I got a laptop cooling pad with two fans on it, and now the laptop is cold at all times even when I leave it one for two days at a time, and even during games. However, it has not solved the issue of shutting down. Could this shutting down issue be anything other than overheating? I’m pretty convinced that it is not overheating, in which case I have no idea how to rectify this situation. It is very annoying as it will shut off after 15 minutes of gameplay on a typical game.
November 22nd, 2006 at 10:38 am
Laptop Shuts down :
*Hp Zv500us
*1280 System Ram
*ATI Radeon 9000 64 mb Dedicated ram
*60 Gig Travelstar hard drive
*Intel Pentium 4 3.0Ghz W/HT processor
My laptop shuts down often for no reason. In the BIOS i have changed the Shared ram from 16-32-64-128mb and each time i get a different reaction. At 16 my laptop will not boot into windows. At 32 it will boot but freeze when i play something like Halo after a minute or two. at 64 it will either freeze or shut off when playing halo for roughly 5 minutes. and at 128 it will just shut down after playing halo for less than 10 minutes.
Now i have tried Memtest and have come up with no errors. I have replaced the memory i could access (256 of it is built in to the board and i cannot change it). I upgraded from the original 256 to a gig and still have the original problem.
I then tested the Hard drive using IBM disk checking software. During the initial test the laptop shut down. Further tests concluded with no error.
I then checked the CPU heat with Everest Ultimate Edition. It was initially hot (about 65 C ) during normal operation. So i replaced the Thermal grease on the CPU and now im running at about 47 C. I am still having the problem after that. So at that temp i know it is not overheating. The fans are working properly and the heatsink is clean. As it shows on everest the CPU is cool.
Now sometimes i dont need to be playing a game. Sometimes im just playing music and it will shut down. No error message just shuts off. If i try to immediately boot up it will either do nothing when i push I/O button or it will turn on and shut immediately off. However, when i unplug the power supply and plug it back in it boots into windows almost every time.
Any suggestions anyone can give would be great because at this point im convinced i have tried everything.