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#1
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Is it an overheat or power supply problem?
At first, my 3 year old Inspiron 1150 started to have blue screens
with kernel_data_inpage. After a lot of trial and error and some diagnostics, I replaced the hard drive. No more blue screens! Now my laptop sometimes suddenly shuts down with absolutely no message. It's almost like I press and hold the power button for a few seconds to force it to shutdown except it doesn't have the short squeak sound the force shutdown has right before the actual shutdown (not sure how to describe that). It just silently powers off. The event viewer has nothing. Before the shutdown, there's no warning. The only pattern I can find is, I think it does this more when it runs CPU intensive programs for a while, watching video, installing Oracle software, etc. I just installed the wonderful i8kfan program (http://www.diefer.de/ i8kfan/). I'll try forcing the fan to run faster while I try to install Oracle again. If it's not a temperature problem, could it be the power supply? Any tips are appreciated. Yong Huang yong321 @ yahoo.com |
#2
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Is it an overheat or power supply problem?
"Yong Huang" wrote in message ... At first, my 3 year old Inspiron 1150 started to have blue screens with kernel_data_inpage. After a lot of trial and error and some diagnostics, I replaced the hard drive. No more blue screens! Now my laptop sometimes suddenly shuts down with absolutely no message. It's almost like I press and hold the power button for a few seconds to force it to shutdown except it doesn't have the short squeak sound the force shutdown has right before the actual shutdown (not sure how to describe that). It just silently powers off. The event viewer has nothing. Before the shutdown, there's no warning. The only pattern I can find is, I think it does this more when it runs CPU intensive programs for a while, watching video, installing Oracle software, etc. I just installed the wonderful i8kfan program (http://www.diefer.de/ i8kfan/). I'll try forcing the fan to run faster while I try to install Oracle again. If it's not a temperature problem, could it be the power supply? Any tips are appreciated. Yong Huang yong321 @ yahoo.com Buy a can of electronics compressed air and blow out/clean all the fans, vents and heatsink. Your situation sounds almost surely like thermal shutdown from overheating. If the system has a (desktop) P4 CPU, this is likely the case. A few other Dell models (and maybe non-Dells as well) with desktop chips are prone to exhibit the same issue. |
#3
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Is it an overheat or power supply problem?
Hi!
Now my laptop sometimes suddenly shuts down with absolutely no message. This is a thermal shutdown. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, the Inspiron 1100 line is famous for this very problem. However, it's not that straightforward. I've seen evidence that these systems can shut down because of a defective sensor. So even when the system is working fine, it might just *poof* and power off. If yours has this problem the only cure I know of is a new motherboard. Which may have the same problem down the road. You might get lucky if the system is really overheating. This can be proved by running the CPU up to 100% utilization and watching for a failure to take place. By doing this a few times you can establish a pattern. From there you can look at what happened and see if the shutdown is really due to thermal reasons. Use a program like Prime95 (which has a testing mode that works really well for this purpose) and get the system good and hot. See if it shuts down. Should you find that the system is really overheating, you can do something about it. On many laptops, the fans inside blow through a radiator-like structure instead of an actual heatsink. Heat pipes are used to connect the hot running parts to these radiators. Over time, these radiators plug up and lose a lot of efficiency (and effectiveness). If you can find the ones on your computer, use a fairly high pressure, clean air source to blow backwards through them. Chances are you will see a LOT of lint come out. Keep doing it until no more comes out. If you can figure out how to safely remove the fan from the computer, you might clean it as well. (That's not for the faint of heart, although Dell does provide service manuals that are pretty well written.) To give you an idea, you might find the following page useful: http://12.206.251.215/d800fanrepair/ (broadband connection suggested) It's about my Latitude D800 and the noisy but seemingly undocumented secondary fan inside it. You can see the radiator like structure that the fan blows through, and how it can get plugged up. Power supply problems can cause abrupt shutdowns, but you're more likely to notice the supply itself malfunctioning (the little light on it goes out unexpectedly, or you hear bad sounds like sizzling), or failing to charge the battery. In really bad cases, the system won't power up at all, or claims that you aren't using a genuine Dell power supply. Good luck! William |
#4
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Is it an overheat or power supply problem?
Thank you both. That's very good information. I'll follow your
suggestions. Yong |
#5
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Is it an overheat or power supply problem?
The Inspiron 1100, 1150, 5100, 5150, and 5160 all have thermal issues best
managed by keeping fans and ventilation areas clear of all dust and dirt and by using i8kfangui to force the fan to cut in at high speed at a pretty low temperature, say somewhere in the 120's Fahrenheit. Dell settled a class action lawsuit on 5150 thermal issues by extending system warranties and replacing system boards. Despite the fact that these computers used mostly desktop P4s and some desktop Celeries, they are pretty decent when allowed to run cool. Toshibas and other laptops of the era all often used desktop P4s... Ben Myers On Sun, 11 May 2008 22:47:58 GMT, "William R. Walsh" m wrote: Hi! Now my laptop sometimes suddenly shuts down with absolutely no message. This is a thermal shutdown. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, the Inspiron 1100 line is famous for this very problem. However, it's not that straightforward. I've seen evidence that these systems can shut down because of a defective sensor. So even when the system is working fine, it might just *poof* and power off. If yours has this problem the only cure I know of is a new motherboard. Which may have the same problem down the road. You might get lucky if the system is really overheating. This can be proved by running the CPU up to 100% utilization and watching for a failure to take place. By doing this a few times you can establish a pattern. From there you can look at what happened and see if the shutdown is really due to thermal reasons. Use a program like Prime95 (which has a testing mode that works really well for this purpose) and get the system good and hot. See if it shuts down. Should you find that the system is really overheating, you can do something about it. On many laptops, the fans inside blow through a radiator-like structure instead of an actual heatsink. Heat pipes are used to connect the hot running parts to these radiators. Over time, these radiators plug up and lose a lot of efficiency (and effectiveness). If you can find the ones on your computer, use a fairly high pressure, clean air source to blow backwards through them. Chances are you will see a LOT of lint come out. Keep doing it until no more comes out. If you can figure out how to safely remove the fan from the computer, you might clean it as well. (That's not for the faint of heart, although Dell does provide service manuals that are pretty well written.) To give you an idea, you might find the following page useful: http://12.206.251.215/d800fanrepair/ (broadband connection suggested) It's about my Latitude D800 and the noisy but seemingly undocumented secondary fan inside it. You can see the radiator like structure that the fan blows through, and how it can get plugged up. Power supply problems can cause abrupt shutdowns, but you're more likely to notice the supply itself malfunctioning (the little light on it goes out unexpectedly, or you hear bad sounds like sizzling), or failing to charge the battery. In really bad cases, the system won't power up at all, or claims that you aren't using a genuine Dell power supply. Good luck! William |
#6
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Is it an overheat or power supply problem?
Hi!
charter.net Ben, you might want to know about: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05...er_and_nebuad/ temperature, say somewhere in the 120's Fahrenheit. My Latitude D800 at 100% CPU utilization can make 159 degrees (F). It's only ever shut down when I left the lid closed overnight. (Long story...it was running a backup at the time...) Despite the fact that these computers used mostly desktop P4s and some desktop Celeries, they are pretty decent when allowed to run cool. I hope they weren't P4 Prescotts! If they were, I'm going to cringe. I know how the huge fan in my Dim8300 could get to simply roaring on a hot summer's day (and that was in a lightly air conditioned room). William |
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