Laptop didn't turn off in backpack.

Okay so I pressed the power button on the laptop (Dell e1705 T7200 w/ Geforce 7900gs) and I thought it turned off, but apparently when I got home 2 hours later it was stuck on some stupid windows error so it didn't shutdown. Well in short, the laptop was a hot brick, so I opened it and shut it down asap (wasn't hard cause it was almost out of juice anyway). Should I be worried about damage from overheating and how do I know if there is any?

 

Lesson learnt - make sure off is off and the lights have gone out before packing away.

In theory, the CPU has thermal protection against overheating. As long as the plastic isn't melted and deformed then you should be OK. However, the component I would be most worried about is the HDD. Is the HDD near to the CPU? You can use various softwares to read the maximum temperature in the HDD's SMART data.

John

 

I think you will be fine. The laptop CPU would have shut down if it was close to over heating but since the laptop was still funktioning and able to shut down I dont think it over heated.

Notebooks are made to last through suprisingly high temperatues. It is not good for them and it will add to the wear and tear but I dont think you will have any noticable effect.

Just use the laptop like you always do. If you notice any new errors or inexplicable behavior then something might have broken. If you really want to force the issue you can try running benchmarks that push the laptop to the max and see if there are errors.

 

Apart from Johns suggestion to verify your HDD status, your battery may be compromised as well. Not that it won't work anymore, but it may have lost some of it's capacity.

 

This apparently is a common problem amongst MBPs too.
Let us know how it turns out

 

I had the exact same thing happen to me on my 9300. When I opened it up it was reporting temperatures close to 100 degrees on both the cpu and gpu. That was 2 months ago, and I have yet to noticed any effects from it. So you will probably be ok. Just keep an eye out for anything strange.

 

If your in a hurry, hold down the power button for 8 seconds ish and boom. F*ck the windows shut down process... they need a fast shutdown option called: Kill everything immediately and do not attempt to save anything or listen to any program complaints.

 

I almost always use hibernation. It may take 30s but is predictable and pretty reliable. But I never put a computer into a bag until all the lights are off, just in case there is a hang-up.

John

 

do you put a notebook in hibernation into a bag John Ratsey?


cuz when i move around and know i will need to power on the computer again because i need to move rooms, or dont need it for the moment, i just put it in stand by and either carry it with me, or put it in its case...

 

Your laptop didn't produce enough heat to harm your hard drive or your battery. ^^ Your LCD was prolly pretty faded, but thats fixed after a cool down.