in need of urgent help w/ laptop

[Darkgundam111]

in need of urgent help w/ laptop (it's not fixed!)

my laptop is a tosiba satelite, and lately it has been acting up. What i mean is it randomly freezes. just a solid light blue screen (not BSOD). and becomes unresponsive. I am not sure what the heck is going on. I checked for bad sectors on hardrive, i cleaned out the dust on the fan. One thing i feel uneasy about is the CPU temp, it reaches 70+ C when I am using it. I am not sure how much different laptops are to desktops, so I am uncertain if I should take that as a overheating issue. I tried reinstalling windows, but that didn't help at all. (I have a dual boot also, and both windows have same problem, which means it can't be the software). Any ideas? I need to use this laptop next week for something important, if anyone has any advice, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance!

 

[Fourstaff]

This is really a shot in the dark, but is there any chance that your laptop's thermal paste is getting old? If the problem persists after a clean reinstall, it usually points to hardware problems. Check if the fans are working too.

 

[Darkgundam111]

the fan is working, and i cleaned the dust off it. thermal paste was what i was thinking too, since cpu is hot, but problem is, its really really hard to take this thing apart

and yeah did clean install, no help. i read that a memory test would be useful, so i shall try that tomrrow.

i tried googling a take-it-apart guide for Toshiba L305D-S5874, but couldn't find one. anyone know where I should look?

 

[Frick]

You shouldn't need a guide, if you're careful and thorough.

 

[viczulis]

Yea Frick is right they arent to bad as long as your careful. And your right, trying to find a service manual for that laptop is a pain. I tried looking but couldnt find one. All I could find is user manual. Sorry

 

[HalfAHertz]

If temp really bothers you, you might try undervolting with either:
http://cpu.rightmark.org/
or http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalCPUID/index-e.html
The laptop is relatively new and if you caught the extended 3y warranty should still be covered. I suggest checking with Toshiba here: http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/support/jsp/globalEntitlement.jsp?nav=Warranty
Opening it up should be the last resort if you're not feeling confident. But to be hones I've had intel mobile cpus go into mid nineties and still work without a hiccup....

 

[Kreij]

70°C doesn't seem all that hot to me, and laptops usually throttle the CPU speed if overheating.

You said you are going to test the RAM tomorrow, I would try that before ripping it apart.

 

[afw]

Well I have the same issue with my HP DV6000 series laptop ... one day the CPU fan made a weird sound and i thought the fan must be failing ... so i checked the temps ... it was idling aroung 70C ... and once I run a few apps together it reaches 95C+ ... but there were no issues such as freezing or BSOD even on 95C+ temps (temps checked using realtemp)

Normally if the fan stops working an error will be shown during startup ... so I thought it shoul be either there is no proper contact between the HSF and processor or the Fan is now spinning slowly ... most probably the second ...

so I took it to the authorized service center and they tried flashing the MOBO BIOS and then they had run a few stress tests and finally told that there were no issues with the laptop (although the temps were high) ... and said if I wanted the HSF replaced they could do it ... so I opted to get the HSF replaced ... and now the laptop is still with them for repairs ... they are waiting for the exact part to arrive from singapore ....

This issue is quite common with accessories having small fans i guess (eg: VGA cards with small fans) ...


Hope this info is helpful ...

 

[Darkgundam111]

so finished memtest, no errors. reading ur guys' comments on cpu heat, that lead me to doubt heat was a problem. so last thing i tried, replaced harddrive. bingo, it was good. thank you all greatly for the help!

 

[Darkgundam111]

It seemed like everything was going well, but sadly it is occuring again. this time I have completely opened it up all the way, cleaned up the dust completely, and reapplied thermal paste to the motherboard's chipset and the cpu. Temps are quite nice but still no good. a random freeze up occured.

So, so far i can rule out: ram, harddrive, heat, dust, software.

any ideas???? i am so puzzled, darn laptops for being such a hassle.

 

[joytime360]

i met the same problem .

 

[3volvedcombat]

The only way i think your gonna be sure of no bad sectors is to download spinrite 6, run it till it finishes its look for surface defects, It always finds em, Only way to check the drive as best as possible

Then the memtest- OVER NIGHT, or 24 freakin hours strait, because you need to figure out if thats the problem because ive seen failed memtest at like 5-10 hours so.

Just a opinion.

If it still fails, then its just a bad motherboard, or dual boot scenario.

 

[Darkgundam111]

can't possibly be bad sectors or dual boot as its a compltetely new harddrive. i guess ill try memtest overnight then.

edit: actually since the laptop has 3 ram sticks, ill just take out 2 and see how it goes, if freezes, ill try a different one and then the last one and see if there is freezing.
cuz i mean the possibility of all 3 ram sticks dying is pretty darn low.

 

[Darkgundam111]

i believe its a bad mobo

dang not much i can do at this point i guess, its a dud. sigh, time to save up money.

 

[Batou1986]

A lot of those laptops have issues with the heatsink being touching the cpu and the gpu and not making contact with one or the other they use cheap metal heatpipes that bend over time from the extreme heat.
I have fixed quite a few of them by putting a copper shim between the gpu/cpu and the heatsink

 

[Radical_Edward]

Batou's info is good, I recently repaired a Dell laptop doing such.

 

[Darkgundam111]

woah that sounds like a good idea to try. but then how thick would you suggest? and where might i find some?