“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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February 28th, 2006 at 6:43 am
Quick question for my 9-month old Toshiba Satellite M45-S331– I haven’t seen too much about fan or overheating problems in a few quick searches online, but that’s gotta be what’s going on with mine.
Symptoms: if it will even get to the point where it loads windows (about one in every 10 “power-on” attempts, the computer generally freezes up completely as I attempt to run the very first application.
Strangely, I’ve been able to get it to run perfectly fine in “Safe Mode” and even in “Debugging Mode” a couple times, during which I upgraded the BIOS (no help), removed programs from loading on startup in msconfig (no help), even did a virus scan in hopes that it might be virus-related (no help).
I took it apart and cleaned the heatsink. Iit had a tiny bit of lint, but really not very much lint in there — certainly not enough to completely cover the grating anywhere. So that didn’t seem to make any difference. (Thank you so much for the helpful photos and charts, by the way). There was lots of the white thermal greese in there, but do you think putting new stuff in there would make a difference?
I’m kinda at a loss right now.
Still under warranty (assuming I didn’t somehow void it by cleaning out the heatsink), but I’m a little bit afraid that if I make the nine-hour trip to the nearest authorized toshiba repair place (I moved from the U.S. to China last Auguat) that they won’t be able to help me. Would I be better served just wiping the hard drive clean and hoping that the computer will somehow run long enough to let me reinstall Windows? Any other suggestions?
February 25th, 2006 at 12:05 am
The dust is collected between the fan and the heatsink. When you blow compressed air inside the fans opening on the bottom, it will go through the heatsink and should clean it.
February 24th, 2006 at 11:57 pm
OK, I’ll try that once I get a can of it, since blowing at it normally doesn’t seem to be clearing anything. If it’s working right, will air still just come out the fans, or will I also get air out of the heatsink?
February 24th, 2006 at 11:42 pm
Sometimes, when the heatsink is not clogged completely, I clean it with a compressed air. Blow it inside the fan opening on the bottom of the laptop, so the dust goes away through the opening on the laptop side.
February 24th, 2006 at 11:32 pm
Is there anyone to clean the heatsink for an A70 without having to completely dismantle it?
February 23rd, 2006 at 4:46 am
A cheap temporary fix: With an overheating Satellite 1905 S303 in Athens, afraid of the fragile pins and with no tools to open the heat sink cover, I simply held my household vacuum cleaner nozzle over the fan intake for three minutes. Gradually it sucked some nasty fuzz up against the grate, which I could then pull out. For the first time in a year, laptop now runs without the fan permanently blasting away…
Hope I haven’t doomed myself some other way…
February 19th, 2006 at 7:10 pm
Thank you,your site has helped me as well as saved me time an money.
February 18th, 2006 at 11:00 pm
Thank you George,
About 90% of all Toshiba laptops we repair are covered under warranty.
February 18th, 2006 at 10:54 pm
Hi, This is an excellent site for all the infomations on the Toshbia laptops. Keep up the good works!! Do you guys service Toshiba Laptops out of warranty? Thanks ,
February 14th, 2006 at 9:09 am
If the laptop is still under warranty, I wouldn’t recommend taking it apart yourself. To replace thermal compound on Toshiba Satellite A75 you have to take apart laptop completely and it will void the warranty. Just take it to a repair shop and let them fix it. It shouldn’t take more than 3-5 days. Also you can ask them to replace the CPU fan. On this model fans are not very reliable. Ask them to check if the top cover assembly on your laptop was modified to avoid a static electricity issue (your laptop locks up when you touch around the speaker area). The top cover replacement is covered under warranty.