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Laptop shuts off randomly, not sure why

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As I stated in the title my laptop will randomly shut down (not a proper shut down just the screen goes blank and everything turns off), I think this is due to overheating but sometimes I can turn it straight back on again and it'll have no problems for another few days, however sometimes it will boot into windows and do this again, however it NEVER does this before I've logged into vista, I usually have to leave it to cool down for half an hour or so after that. Sometimes it does this but it won't boot up for an hour or so, it does seem to be running quite hot when this happens.
I get this happening to me less when it's on a desk, but it still happens sometimes.
I have a notebook cooling stand that I use when gaming/ just after it does this in-case overheating is the problem but I'm not sure what the problem actually is.
I'm guessing it might be due to it warming up which means there's higher resistance in the parts which means they need more power to work properly and my PSU or whatever it would be in a laptop can't handle it and dies since there's no difference in this problem between my gran's house where the heating's constantly on (something over 20 degrees) and my house where the heating's rarely on (usually around 12 degrees at home I think, I'd have thought this might make a bit of a difference to overheating but don't know.
Anyone have any idea why this might be happening and/or a way to fix it?
 
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Should it be on or off? I'm looking in the settings for the plan, this is on vista if that would change anything. Another point is that this only started happening after I sent my laptop back to acer and they replaced the motherboard due to the one they put in the first time they repaired it being duff.
 

spearman914

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Should it be on or off? I'm looking in the settings for the plan, this is on vista if that would change anything. Another point is that this only started happening after I sent my laptop back to acer and they replaced the motherboard due to the one they put in the first time they repaired it being duff.

It should be off.
 
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Thanks, would it be under the sleep setting? I can't see the standby setting for the power plan, might be me being blind (I'm not but you know what I mean or vista being stupid).
 

spearman914

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Go to CP > Power options > Click "Change plan settings" > Change advanced power settings > go all the way to the bottom > expand Battey and change low battery action and critical battery action to do nothing.

Edit: When you log back on do you get a BSOD?
 
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Cheers, I never get a BSOD from this, I just get soemthng saying that It shut down in an un-safe manner and it asks if I want to go into safe-mode, I did this a couple of times after it did this but it still crashed so it's either an OS issue or something wrong with this motherboard, however this is infinitely better than before (It wouldn't boot half the time before).
 

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also on the Power Options link, select High Performance.

Or you can create ur own power plan since high performance Is not that “high” (get the point) so I created my own plan and made it maximum performance.
 
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Or I could change the high performance plan to actually be high performance (As high as this brick of a laptop can go anyway) and edit power saver to take less power (Manage to squeeze three hours out of this on a good day with those customised plans going, high performance lasts 40 minutes on battery though.
The critical battery action's to hibernate, the low battery action is set to do nothing, however this is what I've had it as since August which was the last time it got an OS reinstall, the error started when I got it back from repair around 6 september. So I don't think it's that that's done it.
I don't know how to create another plan but there's no need for me to have more than the 3 that vista defaults to that I can fiddle around with.
 
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spearman914

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Ok so you want to edit the high performance plan to save power: Or u can just change it to save power. If you want to save maximum power then set everything to minimum except the cpu.

CP > Power Options > Click change plan settings for high performance > Change advanced settings > I think you know what um the turn off the display and on battery stuff so it's at ur own preference > Change advanced power settings

Require a password on wakeup (if u have one or else disable)
Turn of hard disk : this is how many minutes after idle to turn off HD
Wireless adapter settings: If you use wireless get it to medium / low or high performance - if u don't minimum power savings
Sleep: think you know what that means
USB Settings: if enable allows usb to wake computer or vice versa
Power buttons and lids: you know what that means
PCI-E - if you have pci e devices set to off if don't then maximum power savings
Processor power management: Configure this to how fast u want ur cpu to run
Search and indexing : if u use it then maximum performance if not then power saver
Display: Ur own preference
Multimedia: Prevent idling to sleep if u don't want it to sleep when idling or the other way around
Battery: I just explainded it.
 
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laptops have hardware switches, usualy in the hindge that that turn off the screen and/or the whole laptop or put it in to hybernation when you close it, a loose hindge or a damaged switch could be causing it,

theres also another mechanism, laptops have a circuit in the feed circuit, it basicly tells the laptop if the battery is inserted, it tells the laptop if it should draw its power from the battery or directly from the power connector, a failiure in that switch mixed with a empty battery would cuase random shutoffs,

for the first one, move the screen up and down, if the laptop dosnt shut down, discarted,
for the second one, give the battery a full charge, and then work on battery for a while, see if the problem stops,
 
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I won't even be touching the screen when it turns off, I just hear an audible click and then silence from the direction of the laptop. I've tried the screen thing and there's nothing caused by that.
I use it frequently on battery at school and it never shuts down at school (I tend to use it on a desk). It seems to be something to do with when I use it on my lap but I'd like to know how them fitting a new motherboard has caused this problem, my dad suggested they fitted a watchdog to the motherboard to shut down at a certain temperature if this is the case, is there any way to disable it?
 
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