Has your laptop ever overheated?

[Kev]

Recently my laptop started switching off for no reason. It was if the battery had went dead but the battery was full and the mains was plugged in.

I had a problem similar to this a few years ago with my desktop and it was my heatsink causing it so I suspected it was overheating and from what I've read, that's what it is.

Apparently, one of the best things to do is to lightly suck up the dust from the air vents as this is where dust gathers so cleaning this will help immensely. You can use the small nozzle from a standard vacuum cleaner however I'm going to buy one of those keyboard vacuums as the usb keyboard I use with my laptop is really dusty.

So if you find your laptop switching off for no reason, check the base and see how warm it is. The airways could be dusty or blocked and might just need a good clean.

[QueenB]

I had a Toshiba laptop a few years ago. It wasnt a brand new model and it didnt cost me a lot but, it was superb, had great specs and ran perfectly.......until it started turning itself off. I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what the problem was and discovered it was overheating too. Did everything I could to fix it including buying a laptop cooler but, nothing ever did. I found out later that it was a known problem with that model and I havent touched a Toshiba laptop since (even though I only had Toshiba before that).

[Kev]

Sorry to hear that. There are laptops which are known to overheat a lot more easily than others due to the parts used and the number of fans etc. This is why I would always recommend people check the reviews for any laptop they are thinking of buying just to be on the safe side.

Infact, you should check reviews for pretty much anything like that. I had a maxtor external drive fail on me and I lost a lot of data and when I checked online I found that they were known for this.

[Bex]

Happened to me a couple years ago too. Bought a brand new laptop from Dixons (when it was around lol ), not a great model, just the base £400 model, 40GB hd etc, but was better than my computer at the time.

I think, within a couple of months of having it, it switched itself off, and I figured out pretty quickly why. Touching the bottom of the laptop would nearly burn my hands it was that hot.
And yet, I never took it back. I enquired about it and was told to ring some 0845 number, but never got round to ringing them, so lived with the problem until I sold it....and got a Sony Vaio .

[Rose]

My old one used to do it and eventually broke! I guess the fan did get dust in but I didn't know what to do then! Though what killed it in the end was the power lead stopped working so it wouldn't charge.

[Bex]

I think the fan on mine didn't work at all, from the very beginning lol. And I didn't know how to fix it .

Hopefully they've improved, as I've just remembered today it was an Advent I had.

Only remembering after buying the Advent 4211 today lol . Sure this is much better .