Laptop Problems

My friend brought me his laptop to look at because it was having problems and I realized how little I know about these things. When he starts it up it will run for about 5 min and then shutdown. After shutting down, it will basically refuse to run for more than a few seconds before shutting down again. If left off for a while, it will again work for the initial 5 min or so. It will shutdown even if I simply enter the bios and let it sit there, so I'm pretty sure it's not a Windows or software issue. I figured for sure it was heat related but I took off a small cover on the bottom of the unit and there was a fan there spinning away... it doesn't really feel that hot either. The computer is a Sharp Mebius (sp?) 800mhz PIII.

Any ideas where I should go from here?

Sounds like maybe a heat issue. The onboard temp sensor might auto-shutdown the comp at a certain temperature. Try opening it up and cleaning out all the dust. That could be the culprit to the new heat issue. Also try and get some sort of laptop cooling system thing.

don't rule out PS or battery issue... My old work Toshiba would shutdown after about 10 minutes of use, you'd have to wait all day and then get another 10 minutes.. The PS was trickling juice to the battery and not delivering any to the MB, so whenever I booted I was draining down the already weak battery...

I was a much older laptor than the one you are working on though.. but still might be worth checking out.

Ducatti said:

don't rule out PS or battery issue... My old work Toshiba would shutdown after about 10 minutes of use, you'd have to wait all day and then get another 10 minutes.. The PS was trickling juice to the battery and not delivering any to the MB, so whenever I booted I was draining down the already weak battery...

I was a much older laptor than the one you are working on though.. but still might be worth checking out.

Click to expand...

Never realized that could cause a problem. He did tell me that the battery was totally shot and wouldn't allow the computer to run for more than a min or two. Could I test this theory by simply removing the battery alltogether and running the computer? Or do you think I should advise him to buy a new battery.

laptop battery's cam be very expensive... you can pull the battery and see if it will run, if it does the problem may lie elsewhere... my old laptop wouldn't power on without the battery...

I used to use a gateway laptop and the battery was dead but the computer worked fine when plugged in. How does the computer shutdown? Windows shutdown or just a instant black screen? If you have windows xp you usally get a battery warning if the battery is low causing it to shutdown.

The screen just flicks to black instantly and it tries to restart itself. Sometimes the initial startup screen will flick repeaditly as it's trying to restart over and over.

The laptop has Windows ME on it. .. and it's a Japanese version so I don't think I can even advise him to take it to a repair shop since they'll probably just say they can't read what's on the screen. If it would stay up for more than 5 miniutes I'd install a new OS on it. Regardless of this, I'm sure the OS has nothing to do with the problem since it will restart before even begining to load windows.

If you really want to rule out the OS, make a boot disk...