Burnt fingers (AKA shutdown problem)

Hi:

I've had a W3V since last October and have had no problems with it at all... till this afternoon. I shut it down, unplugged it and stuck it in my back and ran off to an appointment. That appointment took maybe two hours. When I picked up my laptop bag at the end of the meeting, it was warm and I could smell melting plastic. I opened up the bag and reached in... OW! I burnt my fingertips on the top. They are still red 3 hours later.

Any ideas what could have caused that? The battery was fully drained. It started up fine when I plugged it in...

 

HA you put your laptop in your bag while one. or maybe you got it in standby and it turned on somehow. Happened to me once a long time ago. not a good thing to happen. but if it runs ok dont worry about it probably just a fluke.

 

Your fingers are still red after 3 hours? Sounds like you need to have that looked at! The same thing happened to me in Hong Kong with my laptop in my backpack. Sometimes a program does not shutdown entirely and windows (while running the entire time) will have a prompt to shutdown the program or wait. Meanwhile your laptop is in your bag discharging heat and running the entire time until the life of the battery is dissipated. As said in previous post, if it boots up fine again, your good.

 

I agree... if it runs okay, feel lucky. Perhaps the hard drive was still very warm when you stuffed the notebook in the bag and thus the heat was insulated in there...

 

Yeah I have had this happen to my laptop. I thought it was off but windows said otherwise. At least mine was just on the desk. Hope yours is fine.
Tim

 

Yummy
Are we being a little sarcastic? For your nb to burn your tips even slightly the underneath plastic would have to be about 80C. That would make the cpu inside double that just on the copper base and probably 200C on the core. I am 300% sure that if you burn your fingers on the plastic bottom your cpu is melted and all hopes of your lappy turnin on are gone.

 

OUCH, hope everything is okay with your baby. I had a scare too, read the thread.

Anyhoo' I think you'll be okay if it boots up and everything is okay like everyone has said, but if you continue to smell burning plastic after a couple of hours, go clean out your nose and check again. If it still smells then something is wrong.

Just incase I say you take your baby into a repair shop and have her checked out by a technician or take it back to your reseller and explain what happened.

You can never, EVER, be too careful with a laptop.

Cheers,
Mike

 

Nope, not too sarcastic. It was the top, not the bottom. They were red for a bit. Not a full on burn but definitely a bit tender. It was way more than the usual residual heat after shutting it down.

Ther plastic smell was probably the plastic of the laptop and/or bag outgassing because of the heat.

My guess, it this is the temps it would reach if it was on but the fan was not working. We could proabably work out how many watts were expended. It was a fully charged battery and was spent after approximately 2 hours. Anyone able to do the math? Bueller? Bueller?


Thanks for the replies. I'm guessing fluke as well.

Pork

 

Just make sure your laptop is FULLY off the next time you stuff it back in the bag

 

I still don't think the processor would get that hot...I know that on my brothers old laptop if the computer was too hot and the fans were jammed, it would just shut off (not shut down, power would immediately shut off, no warning, just gone). That was a P4 beast, but on the centrino, unless you had a processor intensive program running, then the processor should throttle down considerably, meaning it wouldn't get super hot. 2 hours on an idle centrino - even without a fan shouldn't be very hot at all. I would say something else is going on here - be it software that kept the computer running or something wrong with the chip.

 

The top? You mean the lcd top or what? Thats pretty. Your laptop should not be working now if you felt a burning sensation on your fingers. Its possible that it was in limbo somwhere between suspend to ram/hd and windows this way the monitoring soft for the shutdown temp couldnt shut the notebook down when it overheated but still i dont see how your lappy is working if what you describe is accurate. Theres a good chance it can quit on you sometime soon,

 

I mean the "outside" of the LCD, up by the battery (close your notebook and and grab it at the hinge side - thumb on the back, fingers on the top). The battery was hot as well.

Maybe I overstated it but it was the same as a very hot cup of coffee that you grab for too long. I grabbed the laptop and lifted it out of the bag part way and held it for 5-10 seconds maybe. Then I started making "ooh.. what the heck" kind of noises and dropped it back in.

Based on the responses regarding it no longer working after getting that hot, I'm wondering if there was a short of some sort that may have dumped current through somewhere besides the processor. Bit far fetched.

It works now so I hope I don't get any additional data to support any theories.

Thanks all.