What the hell is wrong with my laptop? :(

Firstly hey there!, i posted this question on yedda.com, and its not done me justice so ive came to here instead.




Context: i have a F3E Asus, ive had this laptop for sometime now, nothing been generally wrong with it but seemed to have this problem over time.... its in good nick, not dropped it or anything, nothing rattles around inside etc etc.. do get blue screened alot for driver failures (possibly looking like this at the top of the blue screen: Power_state_driver_failure, or somethng like that) which sometimes happens alot when i have my webcam in and have used it for a long time... but this may be a seperate problem..



the problem: Right everytime i have my laptop on battery, it obv runs out quite quickly as im on it alot doing alot of things, so then i consequently put in the wall charger lead. this then makes the fan(s) inside go off the chain, like they speed up to the sound like its taking off almost. this doesnt seem to effect the laptop however as its clearly the cpu speeding up to work harder or something like right? it doesnt speed up this fast usually without the powercable plugged in though.. which is odd..or normal? you tell me. but anyway, once a certain period of time has passed with the cable in, the laptop will sometimes just turn itself off... like the screen willl to a casual fade to black and it will run for like 30 seconds after.. then shut it self off.. and windows counts this as a crash saying its been turned off incorrectly... but theres usually nothing i can do at the time! i thought it could be it over heating as i sometimes have it on fabric. like on my duvet and i thought maybeit could be the amount of air coming out of the laptop was being resticted but it does this also on my desk

recently in the past few days, its beeing turning it self off, or either into sleep mode, just on the fact that the charge of the laptop has just gotten into the warning state (like when that little yellow triangle warning sign comes on) this is not the red warning sign which gives you a time limit to how much you have left.

well its very infuriating while it does this constantly. so tell me is it cause its overheating alot or anything? i mean my laptop has had some serious temperatures on it and it never always crashes like this...

is it something to do with the battery, cause if its powercable related, and obv theres nothing wrong with the power cable, i came to the idea that theres something wrong with the battery of the laptop? or something like that..



any help appreciated, just wanted to check before i get it check out and fork out a fortune on trying to fix the bugger..



cheers.

sorry for any obvious speling mistakes i cba to go back though it again lol


Sam.

 

This sounds pretty serious..id imagine its the mobo , tis after reading your post 5 times and attempting to figure out your situation is the conclusion I first made...If it happens alot, and by your post it sounds like it is, then id assume my assumption is correct. Although iv had this happen to me, not on any frequent basis to even remember it. IF it was just your lcd turning off then we could assume it was just your lcd, maybee an inverter gone bad, or a backlight on the fritz...but the entire system turns off. Memory usaly causes freezes or bsods..so its not that, the only thing i could think of would be something with your mobo isnt staying connected and allowing your op system to lose its power slowly like you described...iv never had any mobo problems though , and god help me i never will...series pain to remove a mobo in a laptop i could only imagine.

 

I think you just have a bad battery. Take you're batter out completely and use your computer some just on AC power. I've seen one of my laptops not even turn on with the battery in, but with it out everything was great. It sounds to me like your computer is getting confused from the power issues and going to sleep, or trying to anyway.

 

I agree, it does sound like the battery may be the primary issue here - the quick unexpected shutdowns and other warning triangle things make me think an older battery may have some serious wear levels and hasn't been calibrated in a long time (I get similar things on the 3yo battery in my daughter's W3).

If the wear and remaining capacity are getting bad, say below 30-40%, then you can see symptoms like the notebook instantly going from working to sleep (if that's what you have the Power Options set to do with low power) without the usual warning. You also could just have suddenly developed a bad cell - batteries do that sometimes - which is now compromising the rest of the battery, too.

I would suggest to follow bmcassagne's suggestion to run on AC only and see if you can replicate the issue. But first, I would say check your battery health with Mobile Meter and report back here if that's normal.

 

Your primary issue at first glance appears to be the battery not holding enough charge. Second possible scenario is a mainboard related problem such as ACPI not properly switching between states. Hence, webcam error when not in use for awhile- but only if you still have the Asus Screensaver that uses the webcam. The remaining issues you have outline is possibly due to OS rot ( Windows is known to rot, get slower over time. Fragmentation of the registry and the data within the HDD.), please consider reinstalling the operating system after resolving your hardware related issues.