Inspiron 5100 won't stay on for more than 10 minutes.

My old, dying Inspiron 5100, long out of warranty, has reached a state where it will automatically shut off after 10 minutes. Then, after a restart, it only lasts a few seconds, if it even gets past bootup. But if I wait for a while it will stay on for 10 minutes again. It does this running on battery power or running on AC with the battery removed or installed.

I suspect that a fan somewhere is busted, and since the warranty has expired there is little I can do. My hope was to use this machine as an access point for a home server, but I am worried that it is nothing more than a paperweight at this point.

My preliminary research returns only this result<a/> involving clearing dust from the machine. Should I buy some compressed air, or is it too late at this point?

 

If you haven't cleaned your notebook's fans and heatsink you should do so. Usually when a notebook automatically shuts off it is because of overheating. For laptops more than a year old, it is often dust has accumulated, blocking the vents/outlet.
You will have to dismantle your notebook a bit to get to the fan and heatsink. I would recommend using a cloth to pick out the large dust particles then use compressed air to rid the smaller/hard to get regions.
Make sure you take the battery out and unplug your notebook before unscrewing anything.

 

That is correct. That is a common problem on the Inspiron 5100. In fact i'm typing on one right now. The easiest way is to remove the top flange cover that sits over the On/Off button, remove the keyboard and turn the laptop on it's side. Take a can of compressed air and shoot several short blasts of air at the heatsink. Also another trick is to turn the laptop upside down and take a vacuum cleaner hose and suck out any dirt from the bottom grille (that's where the 5100 brings in cool air to the CPU).

 

Well, I opened everything up, cleaned out the dust, vacuumed the back of the machine, then installed a temperature gauge as per the link in my first post, then watched the machine to see what happens.

It turns out that the fans never turned on, and the machine started at 59C and after a steady incline in temperature shut off at approximately 72C.

It seems that the fan is broken. Since my computer is past the warranty period, what can I do about this?

 

It is a known problem. Dell has already lost the class action lawsuit on the 5150 and several other models, but the class action lawsuits (in California and Canada) on the 5100 have not settled yet.

If you let it cool down, turn it over and remove and reseat the memory chips it might come up. At least until it gets warm enough to happen again.

There are also fan utilities you can download that provide more fan control and seem to help a bit. Your fan may not be broken, it may just not be turning on.

See also this old thread.

 

Does this mean that there is a possibility that Dell will replace the part even though the warranty has expired if I contact them?

Really? That's odd, but I will try it.

Any recommendations of what fan utility I should try?

 

I tried to get Dell to talk to me about it. They would take the laptop in on a fee-based service call only. I decided to park it and wait to see what transpires on the class action front.

The problem is that the motherboard heats up and expands making key components no longer make contact. I have two memory chips in mine. Sometimes it would boot up and the BIOS would tell me the memory had changed (by half). Other times (presumably when the main memory chip was the first to encounter the problem) it would just not come up. Reseating the memory helps.

I updated the prior post with a reference to a utility I had tried that let me keep the fan running on high all the time. It sometimes helped. It seemed like a prudent thing to do, to run the fan on high all the time on an overheating laptop, especially when it was already out of warranty and already defective and already in the courts in more than one country!

In the meantime I bought an HP laptop. I see no reason to reward Dell with further purchases at this time.

 

Of course, the fan in your 5100 could be broken ....

 

I ran dell diagnostics and got error code 3700:011B. This means that the heatsink is kaput.

This dell forum thread says that dell will not replace out-of-warranty parts.
This dell forum thread says that they have.

I contacted dell online support chat and they told me to call the Out of Warranty Department to get the part replaced. It looks promising, and I will report back after I call them tomorrow morning.

Thanks for your help, AKAJohnDoe. Consider your rep boosted!

 

Good luck!

 

Just fyi, even if Dell no longer makes or stocks the part you're looking for there's a good chance you can find it from some 3rd party vendor.

 

I called the Dell Out of Warranty Department, and they forwarded me to technical support, who agreed to replace the heatsink in my machine for free and pay for all shipping charges. They said that the heatsink on my computer was covered by warranty until September 30, 2007, even though I bought the machine with a 1 year warranty in 2003. DHL is picking up the 5100 later this week.

 

be sure to backup all data, just in case.

 

Alternately, take out the hard drive before sending it in.

 

Do'h................

 

Update: I got the computer back 3 days after sending it in. They replaced the heatsink, LCD screen, keyboard, LCD front bezel, LCD top cover, system board, modem and they are sending me a new battery as soon as they get one in stock.

I'm very happy with the results, obviously.