“My Toshiba laptop suddenly shuts down by itself without any warning. Sometimes it works fine for hours, sometimes it shuts down in 10-15 minutes.” This complaint we hear from our customers over and over again. About 15-20% of all Toshiba laptops we get for repair, suffer from an overheating problem. Yep, OVERHEATING!
This is one of the most common problems with Toshiba laptops we deal with.
Indications of laptop overheating problem:
- The keyboard and the bottom of your laptop are very hot when the laptop is working.
- The CPU fans are working all the time at maximum rotation speed and operate much louder than before.
- The laptop suddenly shuts down by itself without warning. When it just started, the laptop was shutting down after 1-2 hours and how it shuts down after 5-10 minutes of operation.
- The laptop works fine when it runs idle, but shuts down as soon as you start using any memory demanding applications (DVD player, image editing software, video editing software, etc.).
Solution:
If the CPU heatsink is not clogged with dust and lint completely, you can use canned air and just blow it inside the laptop through the openings on the bottom and on the sides. It’s nice as a precaution measure, but it might not work if your laptop already has a problem and the heatsink is completely clogged.
- Open the laptop case, so you can access the CPU fan and the heatsink. In some cases you can access the heatsink through the latch on the bottom of the laptop. Sometimes (for example Toshiba Satellite A70/A75) you have to open the laptop case all the way down.
- Carefully disconnect the fan cables on the system board and remove the fan. If the fan makes unusual sound when it spins (grinding sound), I would recommend to replace the fan.
- Clean the fan and the heatsink with compressed air.
- I would also recommend removing old thermal grease from the CPU and applying new grease for better heat conductivity.
UPDATE: I just received a nice tip from MC N’Colorado. I think it could be useful for all of you with guys:
I decided to use a shop vac to suck the dust out and it worked. I tested it by letting the machine run all night and it worked. It’s been a couple of weeks now and I’m glad I did it. I was ready to take the machine apart, now I’m glad I didn’t. I’d suggest you use a heavy duty shop vac to clean out the fan and heat sinks first.
I agree. Try to fix the problem without taking the laptop apart first but I would recommend using a powerful air compressor instead of a vacuum cleaner.
If your laptop is still under warranty, you can take it to any Toshiba Authorize Service Provider and fix the problem at no charge to you.
Toshiba laptop disassembly guides with pictures and instructions.
Toshiba Satellite A15 Clogged Heatsink
Toshiba Satellite A35 Clogged Heatsink
Toshiba Satellite P15 Clogged Heatsink. Absolute champion!
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June 17th, 2006 at 9:33 am
Luis,
Toshiba Satellite A65 has a memory integrated into the system board. Actually, it’s a few chips soldered to the board permanently. You cannot replace or re-solder it yourself. If onboard memory is bad, the entire system board must be replaced.
June 17th, 2006 at 7:42 am
Hi,
I have a toshiba satellite A65-S126 which according to the gig sqpuads the memory that come with this computer (256 MB) is bad. But they told me that this memory can not be replace. It is true?, If not how can I replaced.
Thanks
June 17th, 2006 at 12:55 am
I had similar problems with my P35 S609 overheating. I spoke to Toshiba’s customer support rep, who suggested I take my machine in for service; however, thanks to discovering this site and looking several recommendations, ranging from using canned air to blow the machine out, to taking the machine apart, I decided to use a shop vac to suck the dust out and it worked. I tested it by letting the machine run all night and it worked. It’s been a couple of weeks now and I’m glad I did it. I was ready to take the machine apart, now I’m glad I didn’t. I’d suggest you use a heavy duty shop vac to clean out the fan and heat sinks first.
June 15th, 2006 at 5:16 pm
Michael,
You are right. If you hear a funny clicking or grinding sound from your laptop when it stalls, then most likely the hard drive is bad and must be replaced. It’s not a hard drive overheating problem; it’s just a bad hard drive.
June 15th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
Hey Nima,
Does it makes three beeps – pause – three beeps – pause- etc.? I would try to test the memory first. Here’s my post that explains how to use memory test utility.
June 15th, 2006 at 9:14 am
I had something that looked similar to CPU overheating, but apparently wasn’t. The machine would stall after some 1-2 h of work. I tried cleaning the heatsink, throttling the CPU, no dice. I then noticed that the hard drive was making funny noises when the computer had stalled. I changed the hard drive (got a Western Digital from tigerdirect instead of the Toshiba one, $88 Canadian), and so far it has not stalled again. May have been hard drive overheating. Just in case your box behaves similarly, may be worth a try…
June 14th, 2006 at 4:58 am
Hi, i have Toshiba A75-S229 P4 laptop .when i play dvd or play any video file from internet
I am getting blue screen saying memory dump.when i try rebooting its work for about 30min and it does that again after cuple time rebooting i can boot. its beeping and no video. i restore the OS 3 times from toshiba CD its does same thing even i restore fresh install. any help will be good
June 14th, 2006 at 12:00 am
[...] If your laptop shutting off without any reason, then I am almost 100% positive that you are experiencing a laptop overheating problem. This is a very common problem with Toshiba Satellite A70 and A75 laptops and could be easily fixed if you clean the heat sink. Overtime the heat sink gets clogged with lint and dust. It ruins normal air flow inside the heat sink and the heat stops dissipating. As a result – the CPU overheats and the laptop shuts down. In some cases it would be enough just to blow off the heat sink with compressed air to get the laptop back to normal condition. Try to clean it with compressed air first. Sometimes it is necessary to take the laptop apart, so you can access the heat sink and remove all collected overtime dust and lint. I covered an overheating problem with more details in this post. Posted by Laptop Freak on June 14th, 2006 Filed in Laptop shuts down, Laptop Overheats [...]
June 12th, 2006 at 11:47 pm
[...] I am pretty positive that it is not the FL inverter issue. A defective FL inverter would cause a problem with the backlight, but not with the image on the screen. Apparently there is no problem with the video chip on the system board because you can get the external monitor to work properly. With the image going crazy, jumping in and out and scrolling, I would suspect the video cable first. [...]
June 12th, 2006 at 1:46 pm
Same kind of lag thing can happen with Dells when the heatsink is clogged. If it gets reallly clogged then usually the system doesn’t hang completely, but once in awhile starts running REALLY slowly as it switches into a fail-safe mode. Here’s a video about cleaning the lint off a Dell D600 heatsink:
http://geekswithblogs.net/lori.....81623.aspx