“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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December 16th, 2008 at 12:51 am
i have a satellite a 200 laptop but the cord that is plug into the charging ie,the adapter plug is getting so hot that it could boil my coffe
December 14th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
William Reece,
Do you experience any problem with your laptop?
December 14th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
o.d,
Most likely your laptop shuts down because of overheating. Check the heat sink and if it clogged with dust, blow it off with compressed air.
December 14th, 2008 at 5:38 am
I ran memo test from cd all night and it show only 1 error. is the memory still bad. a45-s121 notebook
December 11th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
I have a Toshiba Tecra 8100, my lapto’s screen is broken
everything is fine except the front screen.
I can not see any thing clear
any body have idea how to change my laptop screen and whre can I get it
I am from India near by Delhi
Regards,
Amjad
Dehradun, India
December 9th, 2008 at 7:21 am
hello, if i run the memory test and it shuts down suddenly during the test, whats the probs?
and, when run in safe mode, its fine coz in safe mode i basically cannot do anything and just let it on.
it normally shuts down when using app that requires high memory like photoshop and games in facebook like pet society.
can u please help me? its not the fan, coz my laptop is new and there;s no dust.
December 7th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Roger,
What was wrong. Why do you think they broke the laptop?
Did you test laptop memory? You can use Memtest86+. Run the test an let it finish a few passes.
From my experience, CPU failures are very rare. If the laptop works fine in Safe Mode, most likely your problem is not related to the CPU.
December 7th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Pete,
Apparently, the cooling fan was on the brink of failure before cleaning. Cleaning it with the shop vac was the last straw.
Unfortunately, it’s not easy to replace fans inside a A45 laptop because it’s buried deep inside, under the system board.
Take a look at the laptop disassembly guide at http://www.irisvista.com/tech/
If it looks complicated, I would suggest taking your laptop to a repair shop.
December 6th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
I have a Toshiba m45-355
(
GeekSquad Broke it
i reinstalled windows 3 times, runs fine in safe mode but booting in regular mode it crashes, my first thought was that it was a driver because it works fine in safe mode… i was wrong… My second thought was that maybe it was the video card… I was wrong… infact i have tested almost all the peripherals… it is running fine right now in regular mode after a fresh install and that is because i am only using 2 percent cpu and 89mb of ram. when i plug in my USB it crashes on top of its random crashing, also when i tried to install xp pro with sp2 it would crash and will only take xp home. what do you think is the problem? i believe it may be the processor but in the back of my mind it tells me its a driver somewhere. please email me the answer thanks
December 3rd, 2008 at 5:06 pm
I tried the shop vac and air it now on my Toshiba .A45-S121 . It is not shutting sound like it was but now the fan sounds sick . What can I do next ? If need to replace the fan how do it do it and where do I get the fan . – Thanks
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