Why my Toshiba laptop suddenly shuts down by itself without warning?
“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.).
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!
Entry Filed under: Toshiba Laptop Problems
814 Responses to “Why my Toshiba laptop suddenly shuts down by itself without warning?”
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Pages: « 82 … 79 78 77 76 75 [74] 73 72 71 70 69 … 1 » Show All
April 15th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Flim,
I would run memory test. Download Memtest86+ utility and test the memory.
April 15th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
[…] Satellite A75. Even though these are completely different models, they have very similar problems: laptop heatsink gets clogged and the laptop overheats, improperly grounded top cover causes the laptop to freeze up and reboot, badly designed DC jack […]
April 15th, 2008 at 2:54 am
I have a compaq nc6000 and sometimes it starts sometimes it doesn’t. And when it starts if you live it idle it will freeze in like 30 seconds. However, if you start a game or some kind of software program it works just fine. When you shut down the game/program it freezes immediately. Very weird. Any kind of help is welcomed!
April 12th, 2008 at 9:09 am
My 2 month Toshiba A210 Equium shuts down usually after a few hours, the screen will blank out and I have to restart. I thought it might be overheating. It happened also once when I was running a lot of functions and programmes at the same time. Though it is a 2ghz processor so shouldn’t be that? The last time it happened the disc drive popped open a few times. Can somebody help please???
April 9th, 2008 at 6:53 am
This is such a life saver!!!! Thanks for the advice…..almost gave up on my Toshiba laptop this morning
April 7th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
I have a Toshiba A75-S125. It shuts down 2 minutes after I started Disk Defragmenter or Disk Cleanup. Compressed air can did not get much dust out of the laptop. I decided to use my leaf blower and it worked great!
Notes:
- have someone hold your laptop, else it’ll be blown away.
- turn the blower on for 10 seconds to let all the dust come out
- block your laptop fans so that they won’t spin (I used a small electric wire)
April 6th, 2008 at 9:15 am
I have a Toshiba M55-s3294 which tends to lock up at least once a day. It sounds a lot like the static dischaged problem other Toshiba laptops suffer from, but I guess it could have something to do with overheating. The laptop doesn’t restart by itself or anything, it just locks up almost entirely (every minute or so, the cursor will move a little bit). Does this sound familiar to anyone? The fan and heat sink don’t look clogged, and I clean them with compressed air regularly…
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:13 pm
my problem is the fan is working fine but the CPU hits the 100% and suddenly goes off while downloading…so i hope if any one can help me out……i have done all the clean up of CPU and the fan but still the same problem…….
sam
PH:+6799658912
Fiji Islands
March 30th, 2008 at 7:44 am
Hey great site….. loads of great info
My friends Tecra M2 Has the following symptons
1) Sudden shuts down after a couple of hours - gets very hot. (Figured this must be overheating)
2) The battery doesn´t hold more than 10 mins charge at which again sudden shutdown
3) There is a loose connection in the AC Jack which requires some delicate fiddling to get the juice flowing to the laptop which is lost of the laptop is moved
I used to work in an IT office and know my way around the inside of a desktop but have never tried anything more complicated than changing the memory on a laptop. How easy is it to dismantle the Tecra M2 and how easy is it to do serious damage to the laptop to fix these problems. is almost three years old and the only repair centre in my area is very expensive, but seeing as the laptop is not mine I dont want to make it worse by trying to fix it.
Loads of thanks for any adivce you might have
March 29th, 2008 at 9:42 am
I just followed the instructions for disassembling my P35 Laptop and it was jampacked with dust, lint and hair. I’d been having the shutdown problems for quite some time and found this site thanks to Google.
Great instructions, thank you for revitalizing my laptop!