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
881 Responses to “Why my Toshiba laptop suddenly shuts down by itself without warning?”
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Pages: « 89 … 14 13 12 11 10 [9] 8 7 6 5 4 … 1 » Show All
April 16th, 2006 at 9:17 am
Hi Brandon,
Most of the time the laptop shuts down not because of a noisy fan but because of a clogged heatsink. I am pretty sure that you will fix the unexpected shutdown problem by cleaning the heatsink and replacing the thermal grease.
I think that your fan should be replaced too. I have seen a lot of A70/A75 fans making a grinding sound when it spins on highest speed. Usually we replace the fan in this case. If you have no money to buy a new fan now, then you can leave it as is for a while. But the heatsink cleaning is necessary to prevent shutdowns.
BTW, the Toshiba part number for fan assembly is: K000016310
April 15th, 2006 at 11:46 pm
Thank you cj2600. I have a Toshiba Satellite A75-S226 laptop and I was wondering if my fans are messed up because my laptop shuts down unexpectedly. My fans makes grinding sounds when I put my power to full power such as processor speed and brightness but it goes away if I put everything on low, I can also feel the air coming out from the bottom and the fans are loud. I’m going to disassemble and follow your guide and also put as5. Hopefully this can solve the problem of the fan and the unexpectedly shutdowns. Any other advice? Thanks again
April 14th, 2006 at 11:38 am
Dear cj2600:
Thank you very much for your response. Please let me know if the result of removing “the DVD/CD-ROM drive, modem, wireless card, etc” is SIMILAR TO DISABLING THESE DEVICES USING DEVICE MANAGER.
I want let you know that my majour problem is that Windows Media Player plays CHOPPY STREAMING VIDEO FILES .WMV.
The problem arose after I installed RED VIDEO TOOLS converter from http://www.videohelp.com/mov2avi.htm. Full Recovery with Toshiba Recovery CD’s and clean Windows reinstall did not solve the problem.
Thank you in advance for your help.
Best regards,
Peter
April 12th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
Hi Peter,
Not sure what is going on with your laptop. I think that cleaning the heatsink will not help. It is possible that one of installed devices is bad and loads the CPU 100%. Try to remove the DVD/CD-ROM drive, modem, wireless card, etc… one by one and start the laptop after each removed part. Check if it fixes the problem.
April 12th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
Hi Brandon,
You can find some help for Sony laptops here and here.
April 12th, 2006 at 9:54 am
Hello cj2600:
At the beginning I used an original Toshiba restore CDs and then I did clean Windows restore using Windows XP CD. Why CPU is always busy? What is the problem? Can heatsink cleaning help?
April 12th, 2006 at 9:30 am
Do you know any sites that show how to repair a sony vaio laptops??
April 12th, 2006 at 12:04 am
Hey Peter,
That is very strange that a fresh Windows XP load uses 100% of the CPU. Are you using an original Toshiba restore CDs? Most likely the video are choppy because the CPU is always busy. It’s not normal.
April 10th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
Thank you very much for this very helpful and informative website. I tried to find answer how to solve the problem with my Toshiba Satellite 1415-S173 notebook. WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER PLAYS CHOPPY VIDEOS.
I did clean reinstall of Windows XP and did not get any positive result. My computer works slowly and CPU usage is mostly 100%.
Is there the solution to above problems?
Thank you in advance for help.
Sincerely,
Peter
April 10th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
Thanks, the memory was in wrong. The heatsink was clean and yet I’m still having the shut down problem. In the past two days my AC connection has begun flickering and going off. The motherboard on my M35X has already been replaced twice–first right after I bought it and again 6 weeks ago.
IMPORTANT NEWS for everyone: I called Toshiba and they put me through to a customer service rep who told me that there is a big lawsuit against these models due to a grounding problem. They said that I will be contacted and compensated when it is over. In the meantime, all repairs will be free if I take the computer to an authorized repair center.
To all fellow Toshiba sufferers, make sure that Toshiba has your contact information by calling their warranty department at 800-240-7100.