Computer woes

[Jubal]

My laptop just died, power just went totally. Suspect it's overheating again, and possibly the motherboard is wearing out at last. I tried rebooting with no joy; after taking the battery out and running off the mains I've managed to power it up and get it functioning again. I'm a bit nervous about its likely future though - may need to be investing in a new computer not far into the future if things are starting to wear out and this wasn't just a freak issue.

[Glaurung]

Oh dear - I'm sorry to hear this. Is this the same laptop that was suffering battery problems in the spring? It sounds to me as if something odd is happening with the power supply system.

[Jubal]

Power doesn't seem to be the sole issue this time, I'm back using it with the battery without issue. I think some processor part might have been overheating though.

[comrade_general]

Too much pron.

[SaidaiSloth]

If you have a small PC enthusiast shop around you, they might just check if they can work out what the problem is for free or very cheap?

[Clockwork]

Replacing thermal paste (if you have that sort of thing in laptops, never opened one up tbh but I don't see why you wouldn't) can help with heat as can finding out if anything is taxing your CPU more than it should. Cleaning fans of whatever is in them and creating more efficient airflow can also do wonders.

EDIT: Oh and a BIOS update could also help if your fans aren't going at the right speeds.

[comrade_general]

A tool called speedfan shows you every temperature and fan setting on your machine for diagnostics.

[SaidaiSloth]

Replacing thermal paste (if you have that sort of thing in laptops, never opened one up tbh but I don't see why you wouldn't) can help with heat as can finding out if anything is taxing your CPU more than it should. Cleaning fans of whatever is in them and creating more efficient airflow can also do wonders.

EDIT: Oh and a BIOS update could also help if your fans aren't going at the right speeds.

In anything other than ~2000 pound gaming laptops accessing anything other than the hard drive and battery is very, very difficult.
Hell in ultralight, unibody laptops like macbooks you can't even get to them without an apple engineer or ifixit team.

[Jubal]

My laptop seems to be happier now it's back in Norfolk, and the fan is quieter again; it's possible that the soot and dust in my Grandparents' house was making the fan quite unhappy.

[Clockwork]

In anything other than ~2000 pound gaming laptops accessing anything other than the hard drive and battery is very, very difficult.
Hell in ultralight, unibody laptops like macbooks you can't even get to them without an apple engineer or ifixit team.

Oh. Fair enough.


@Jub it does sound like a fan issue tbh, this article may help http://www.pcworld.com/article/2021499/how-to-clean-your-laptops-cooling-fans.html

[Jubal]

All seems to be going OK since I got home to a less dusty and sooty environment. Life in the old machine yet!

[Jubal]

It's just gone very dead indeed and won't boot up for love nor money. Power light works, hinge switch seems to affect power light, not a peep from anything else.

[Flamekebab]

So far the only laptop I've found that lasts more than two years of heavy use is this MacBook Pro. Cost the bloody Earth though!

[comrade_general]

It's just gone very dead indeed and won't boot up for love nor money. Power light works, hinge switch seems to affect power light, not a peep from anything else.

You'll have to pull the drive and salvage your data.

[Jubal]

Right, update:

Am currently using a mix of my tablet and a spare laptop kindly lent to me by Glaurung for the next few days. Have access to internet etc but not to my files (I could pull them from cloud onto the spare laptop and may grab a few that way).

Tomorrow I'm in London for a quiz audition, so I'll take the old machine to a repair place nearby on Tuesday. Assuming that repair is not a completely trivial job (and I'd be VERY surprised if it is) I will also rapidly research & order a new laptop then so I can get on with getting the programs and files back that I need to actually function normally. If I can get the old one fixed cheaply I may well do, if not I might get the shop to do file recovery (which should be simple, I'm sure the HDD is in good working order; not sure if I'll really need to as carbonite will have 99% of my stuff, depends what they charge to get me the 1% that I either inevitably forgot to add to carbonite or was done within about 48hrs of doomsday). I genuinely don't know what shops charge for these sorts of services, does anyone have ballpark ideas/experiences?

Hopefully by the weekend/sometime next week I'll have a new machine, ideally by Fri/Sat so I can spend the weekend getting it functional.

@Flamekebab: Two years? That seems awfully short, though I guess you're possibly doing some super-intensive video stuff that I wouldn't be? The one that's just died is about four years old and it's been used and carried around an awful lot in that time.
@Comrade_general: I will indeed make it so.