Laptop Shuts Off: 2010-07-15
Today’s project: An IBM ThinkPad laptop that the customer says shuts off and reboots unexpectedly. So far, I’ve not been able to reproduce what she’s seeing. But I’ll do an Avast scan for viruses, check the battery and power supply, look for overheating, and determine if a corrupt application / program might be causing this. Check the comments below for further updates as this project progresses.
July 15th, 2010 at 7:21 am
10:15 AM: This computer already has the AVG virus scanner installed. So I won’t have to download Avast. However, the AVG software is a year out of date. So I’m in the process of updating that now.
11:10 AM: The AVG update worked successfully the second time; though it failed on the first try. I also discovered that this computer is way behind on Windows XP updates. So I’m installing all those now, before attempting a virus scan.
11:15 AM: The computer just shut off after an hour or so of running. So I’ve now reproduced the problem.
01:55 PM: Updating is still in progress; lots of .NET framework revisions and those can take a very long time.
03:00 PM: Tried running the laptop on its internal battery — did not shut off once. That could be because when running with the battery, there’s less heat generated inside. But it may also suggest a defective power supply. However, I have no replacement of the same type. So I may have to borrow one from sister Christine — she has a laptop similar to this one.
11:15 PM: All software updates have been applied. There are just four hardware driver updates left, and I’ll perform those tomorrow.
July 16th, 2010 at 6:51 am
09:50 AM: Applying the device driver updates now, although I doubt that these updates are going to fix this sporadic shutting off problem. It could be the power adapter, as this problem does not happen that I’ve observed while running on batteries. But to determine that for sure, I’ll have to obtain another adapter (a known good one) to see. Thank goodness for Amazon and eBay.
July 19th, 2010 at 8:20 am
11:18 AM: All XP and device driver updates have been applied. However, the random shut-downs are still occuring. My next step is to obtain a different power adapter and see if this solves the problem. If not, then I’ll not be able to repair this laptop.
July 22nd, 2010 at 6:30 pm
06:30 PM: Sister Christine loaned me a power adapter during our visit to her pool today, to try on this computer to see if the shut-off problem goes away. I’ll do that tomorrow, after I get the sun screen out of my hair.
July 26th, 2010 at 8:36 am
11:30 AM: I’ve run the laptop with Christine’s power adapter for the past few days, and it has not shut off unexpectedly. The original power supply may be the issue, though I’m not quite completely convinced of that yet. I’ve also set the page file size to allow the system to automatically determine it. It had previously been set to manual values that seemed exceedingly low given the amount of RAM present, and I saw many virtual-memory-too-low messages. The new settings should reduce these occurrences.