Faulty laptop, does anyone have any ideas what it might be? Please help

benscoobert · Aug 10, 2009

My wifes laptop overheated the other day, it smelt pretty bad, like cooked thermal paste.

I opened it up and the fins on the heatpipe were almost totally blocked with cack. I took the heatpipe off cleaned it all, reapplied new tp and it all worked fine, about 1 hour later it went off again.

This time its not hot, it wont turn back on and the light to say it is plugged in has gone out. I can get it to turn back on if I remove the battery and power lead for a 20 minutes then replace them and try again. When I do this, it starts to boot for about 10 seconds then powers off as before and were back to 20 mins with no lead and battery.

Does anyone have any ideas? I'm just waiting 20 mins now to try turn on again but I will stop it on bios and see if it crashes then.

Please help

benscoobert · Aug 10, 2009

I turned it on today, went into bios, it turned off after about 10 seconds

Trap05 · Aug 10, 2009

Maybe its not making good contact with the heatpipe? Other wise the motherboard might be cooked.

Spyguy · Aug 10, 2009

If you didn't set auto shut down for high temperatures then you might have damaged the processor. You should always keep speedfan handy on laptops; well, on any system. I clean my laptop's cooling system every 3 or 4 months. Did you ever clean it out before? How long was this laptop used?

vlaszlo · Aug 10, 2009

are the batteries charging ?
It is like you are powering up with empty batteries, and they discharge in 10 seconds.
So either the AC adapter cant provide enough current,
or something is shorted in laptop drawing too much current.

You can measure some voltages with DMM, if you know how

Otherwise component level repair of laptop motherboard is very difficult.

benscoobert · Aug 11, 2009

Trap05 said:
Maybe its not making good contact with the heatpipe? Other wise the motherboard might be cooked.

Its hard to tell, but I think it is, there doesnt seem to be any give when i push it down.

Spyguy said:
If you didn't set auto shut down for high temperatures then you might have damaged the processor. You should always keep speedfan handy on laptops; well, on any system. I clean my laptop's cooling system every 3 or 4 months. Did you ever clean it out before? How long was this laptop used?

It doesnt have auto shut down, it ran fine after I cleaned it out for 1 hour or more, coretemp was reading 50c then. It is 2 years old and that was the 1st clean .

vlaszlo said:
are the batteries charging ?

I'm not sure, when I have left it for a while and plug it in, the orange charging light comes on and I can turn it on for 10 seconds, after it turns itself off the charge light goes out.

Trap05 · Aug 11, 2009

Pull it apart again maybe some some paste got in a place it shouldn't be. Also try it without the battery and see if it behaves any differently

benscoobert · Aug 11, 2009

Trap05 said:
Pull it apart again maybe some some paste got in a place it shouldn't be. Also try it without the battery and see if it behaves any differently

without the battery, it doesnt even give me the 10 seconds, i need battery and power lead for some sttrange reason

jmdixon85 · Aug 11, 2009

Could have cooked the CPU or mobo. What type of CPU has it got?

benscoobert · Aug 12, 2009

IIRC T5500, just turned it on, it needed both battery and power lead, got to "windows did not start correctly" screen then off after about 2 seconds, I was holding the heatpipe pressed to the cpu to be sure its contacting.

Mpegger · Aug 12, 2009

Could be a toasted proc. I had a fan die on a old Pent1 cpu. The fan alarm sounded, but it seems that by the time I realized what it was and turned off the computer, it was too late. The PC would appear to boot, but would never make it far past the bios screen, if it even made it that far.

benscoobert · Aug 12, 2009

Mpegger said:
Could be a toasted proc. I had a fan die on a old Pent1 cpu. The fan alarm sounded, but it seems that by the time I realized what it was and turned off the computer, it was too late. The PC would appear to boot, but would never make it far past the bios screen, if it even made it that far.

in my experience (with desktop processors at least) its extremely rare for a cpu to half work, they either do nothing or work normally (usually)

what is your thought on this?

Trap05 · Aug 12, 2009

Did you pull it all apart and look for paste on the CPU pins and in/around the socket? I don't see why it wouldn't start without the battery...that makes no sense. If you have a DMM check the AC adapter for the proper output voltage. It is rare for a CPU to go bad but without replacement parts it could be the board or the CPU and you'd never know it.

Tophinater · Aug 12, 2009

It sounds like something vital got cooked. You can try switching proc's but most laptops I see that do this there is no hope for them. Once those chips get to hot then thats it. By any chance is this a VAIO?

benscoobert · Aug 12, 2009

I checked the psu, 19.5v

I might try the cpu in another machine, maybe my brother's machine is same socket, shame it aint 775

its an asus aspire laptop

Tophinater · Aug 13, 2009

benscoobert said:
I checked the psu, 19.5v

I might try the cpu in another machine, maybe my brother's machine is same socket, shame it aint 775

its an asus aspire laptop

You're going to have to tell us more than that. What processor does it have and whats the chipset? Did the thing beep at all after you ran it for a while.

Another thing to look at is static discharge. Dust is typically a dielectric but given enough potential (from static charge from maybe a fan or something) it can break down and you can have a sudden discharge at several thousands of volts which can damage components.

Trap05 · Aug 13, 2009

OK so its an Acer.....you can try pulling a stick of ram and trying it and then the other stick and trying that one. Maybe one of them has gone bad.

benscoobert · Aug 16, 2009

Tophinater said:
You're going to have to tell us more than that. What processor does it have and whats the chipset? Did the thing beep at all after you ran it for a while.

Another thing to look at is static discharge. Dust is typically a dielectric but given enough potential (from static charge from maybe a fan or something) it can break down and you can have a sudden discharge at several thousands of volts which can damage components.

T5500 cpu, not sure of the chipset, aspire 5710
it never beeped, even when it was cooking

Trap05 said:
OK so its an Acer.....you can try pulling a stick of ram and trying it and then the other stick and trying that one. Maybe one of them has gone bad.

lol acer yes, was just looking up bios revisions on the asus site, got it stuck in my head, I have tested with 1 of the sticks of RAM and it did the same thing, gotta wait with it unplugged now to test the other, the wait times seem to be getting longer, maybe 2-3 hours now. Deteriorating?

Faulty laptop, does anyone have any ideas what it might be? Please help

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