“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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March 3rd, 2007 at 8:58 am
Richard,
Make sure the laptop cooling fan spins at all. You might have a defective fan. Also try replacing thermal paste on the CPU.
February 28th, 2007 at 5:08 am
hi cj2600,
my toshiba satellite 5100-201 is running fine but when i unplug the dc cable it turn off immediatly.they told me it might be the battery so i changed it but still the same problem the next thing is when the laptop turn off it will never turn on again so i removed the battery and reinstalled it the laptop turn on for seconds and turn off again i have to wait for like three days to be able to turn it on normaly with dc cable ofcourse so what could be my problem please… thanks!
February 26th, 2007 at 5:23 am
Toshiba A10 Over heating problem.
As a fault finding exercise i changed RAM and even tried another hard drive as i was getting strange page fault errors when trying to strat windows XP. As a test i removed the base cover to reveal the cpu fan and heat exchanger to find it clean but very hot. Laptop only ran for a couple of minutes.
To prove the fault i plugged in a hard drier, set it to blow cold air and presto, the laptop did a full install of XP from cd. There must be a better method of transferring the heat on these machines. This laptop has been fine for years but just recently packed it in.
February 24th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
First up; congragulations on an outstanding site! I’m a total newbie to anything techie regarding computers, but I was just fed up with my Satellite P35-S609 overheating and shutting down on me. it made burning discs or even browsing multiple websites impossible.
So using your instructions I dismantled my machine and cleaned out a very clogged heat sink.
Since then it’s been running great. the fans are barely working. In fact, I’ve been running multiple applications/DVDs/video files on it to test it out. So far it hasn’t crapped out on me. but it’s quite cool today; I’ll have to give it a go on a hot day.
One word of caution I would like to say to anyone else trying this is just how difficult and brittle removing and replacing the right speaker connection is. It’s tough to get your fingers around and when putting it back I squashed some of the pins. Now my right speaker doesn’t work.
The headphones work fine, but not the on-board speaker. No big loss, I know but it knocks down its resale value.
Anyway, thanks a million for this site. Because of it I’ll probably get another year or so out of my computer.
February 24th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Zoltan,
I’ve never worked with Satellite 1700 laptops but I think it’s similar to Satellite 1800. I think that Satellite 1800 (and probably 1700 too) might experience an intermittent problem with power because of bad connection between the battery board and the system board. Try reseating the battery board. The battery board is shown on the step 23 in this disassembly guide. The battery board connects to the system board via cables (red and white) and also there is a connector located under the board, you can see this connector on the step 25.
February 22nd, 2007 at 11:03 pm
I have a Toshiba Satellite M45-S331 that was first sold in early 2005 (I think). I am its second owner and it worked fine for me until two weeks ago. I turned it on without the battery and the yellow light around the power button turned on then off. About 3 seconds later, the blue light around the power button and the front 2 blue lights came on. It made some sounds for about four seconds and then turned off. This happens quite frequently now. If it is plugged in, there is no yellow light, but only the blue ones.
I tried opening it, but I can’t seem to get it separated. I don’t see anything wrong with it, but there’s a problem somewhere.
I took out the heatsink and processor, cleaned both, then applied thermal grease to both and reinstalled them. This didn’t fix it.
Please let me know if you know what I can do. It seems like it might be a power issue or maybe overheating.
Thanks.
Mike
February 20th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Hey i got those pics from my own a70 toshiba 3.1ghz
February 20th, 2007 at 8:16 am
Hi, I have a Toshiba Satellite 1700-300 laptop. Although bits break here and there, off and on, it’s been working fine since I bought it about 4 years ago. I’ve been very happy with it, but a few weeks ago it started to show a strange problem.
It powers off in the middle of a session and it looks brain-dead (no leds on, it doesn’t run from battery, either, etc.). If I unplug it and let it rest for a while, it will work OK again, but just for a short time, and it goes dead again. It will repeat this pattern until it will just power on for a few seconds, then I have to put it away. IIf I wait a week, it would work OK for a long time, but soon, the shutdown problem starts all over again.
Then I found your great site, looked through the tips, I decided it might be a power cord/plug problem, so I stripped it down, but nothing of that sort. As my cooling fan had just started playing up I changed that too. Cleaned inside, applied thermal grease, etc, but it didn’t solve the problem.
Sounds strange, but it seems, the longer I let it rest, the longer I can use it afterwards. Seems like she wants to retire? Unless you can help me… Please!
February 20th, 2007 at 4:43 am
Mike Phatty,
Thanks for the pics, they’re working now. Are you sure however that thats the same as an A55-S306, I’ve taken it apart only so far so I couldn’t really tell what it looks like but according to these pics (step 21 on this page, its for a tecra 2, but they say its the same as the Satellite A55: it has no direct attachment to a board (attaches through a wire), but like I said I haven’t taken the laptop apart enough to verify this. What model laptop was that in the pics you supplied?
February 19th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
Bryan,
The screen is not completely black, it’s kinda dark gray with a few thin horizontal lines, right? And the laptop works absolutely fine with an external monitor, right?
I’ve seen this problem with Satellite A105 a few times before. It’s a problem with the MOTHERBOARD. I don’t know what’s exactly is wrong, but it’s the motherboard issue. Firs time I misdiagnosed the laptop, because it looked like an issue with the display/cable/connection (the external video works absolutely fine). I replaced the screen, then video cable but it didn’t fix the problem. Only after I replace the motherboard the problem was gone forever.
After my first Satellite A105 I repaired over 10-15 A105s with exactly the same problem by replacing the motherboard.
Your laptop still should be under warranty. Take it to an authorized Toshiba repair center.