Overheating made my dv9000t non-functional (help?)

Specs of my machine:

HP dv9000t
17-inch display
2.0 GHz dual core (Intel Core 2 Duo)
1.5 GB RAM (came with 512 MB installed, added 1 GB after purchase)
120 GB 5400 RPM internal hard drive

I bought it in May of last year, so it's about a year and a half old. The warranty has expired.

Yesterday, I was doing some audio conversion in foobar (about 40 GB of files, the files were being read and written to an external hard drive connected via USB). Foobar uses almost all of both cores so task manager reported 100% of my CPU being used. (I was on AC power, so both processors were functioning at 2 GHz.) About ten minutes in to the conversion process, my dv9000t completely shut down. (Screen went black, buttons blinked for a second before going out.) This isn't the first time it's happened, so I gave it about ten minutes to cool off and booted up. I figured that the shutdown might have been caused by bloat (the machine hadn't been rebooted in over a week); foobar has used 100% of my CPU before without problems) so I decided to start up foobar again and try the process again. The machine again shut down after several minutes into the conversion process.

I figured that the problem was related to heating. Two summers ago (shortly after I purchased the machine) I had problems with it shutting down a lot when I used it in a poorly-air conditioned dorm room in Harbin, China. (I haven't had problems with it since.) I considered trying to underclock, but entering bios didn't offer any options like this, so I booted again and this time set foobar's affinity inside Windows so that it would only use CPU 1. I began the process and checked the task manager and confirmed that I was using about 50% of my CPU, or 100% of one of my cores.

At this point, foobar estimated that the conversion would take another eight hours (it had previously estimated about four hours using two cores) so I spent the next few hours doing some light processing (chat rooms, internet browsing, utorrent was also running at the time). About four hours later, I finished downloading some music in CUE+TTA format and wanted to convert it to MP3 so I added another conversion process to foobar. I have, in the past, had no trouble with running multiple conversion processes in foobar. The first conversion process (the eight hour one) was operating on an external hard drive and the new one was taking place on my internal hard disk so I didn't think it would be a problem. About a minute after I started, my notebook started making whining noises, but I checked task manager and it reported that I was using about 65% of my CPU. I figured that the whining noise was related to the hard drive and left it to continue its conversion. Several minutes later, my machine shut down.

I gave it an hour to cool off and tried booting it up again, no dice. I left it on my desk overnight, drove to the hardware store this morning to pick up a can of compressed air, drove home and blew all the dust out of any orifices I could find (too little to late, but I didn't know what else to do), and tried booting up. Again, no success.

At this point, I'm all but certain that the problem is related to heat. My notebook shut down three times yesterday. The first two times, the crash occurred when I was using 100% of both of my CPU cores, and I was able to revive it. The third time, I was using 100% of one core and about 30% of the other and running an operation which required heavy use of my internal hard drive. After the third crash, I was unable to revive my machine and am now left with a very hefty paperweight.

What are my options at this point? The machine is no longer under warranty and I'm not really very hardware savvy. (I've never seen the innards of this machine except for the time that I upgraded its RAM.) Should I take it to a computer repair shop and lay down several hundred dollars to have an "expert" look at it?

 

First step to do with a case like this:

HW Monitor from CPUID.com

Monitor the temps and just keep watching them as you run your programs. See what they get up to. If it shuts down, you would know the temp 2 seconds before it shut down, and if its too high, say 185 F or above, then that is the problem.

 

It could be the hard drive has given up, try removing it from the notebook and boot via USB flash drive or good external drive, or at least, try to access the BIOS setup.

 

It's always a big mistake to absolutely, positively, ASSUME that it's due to problem caused by one thing. Never assume anything in electronics (or anything else for that matter). And there aren't any experts today that are younger than 35 who are worth anything, which is why I get paid to fix stuff other people can't. Not that I'm 35 (I wish).

Dude55 is right in that you should at least install and monitor your system with HWMonitor to see what's happening temp wise. However, have you even bothered to check your intake/exhaust vents to see if they're clear or not of dust/debris, or to see if there's any air movement at all? How do you know you don't have a bad fan? There's more than one way to build up heat in a notebook. There's also more than one way to shut it down. Don't get fixated on what you think it might be, check the obvious first even if you don't think it's the cause.

As I said, don't assume anything, even that your problem is due to heat. I've seen too many people and had too many clients assume that a problem absolutely had to be caused by one thing, but the problem with that is you can miss the real problem if you get fixated on one thing. Digital electronic troubleshooting is about logic flow, which is why the charts are designed using digital circuit symbol boxes. Download (if you don't have it already) and go through the flowchart in the manual for your system that deals with shutdowns. And as I said previously, don't overlook the simple and obvious, like fans, dust/dirt, even voltage input from the outlet.

 

Look for sign that your laptop has power: such as blue ring at the DC jack, battery charging. If there is nothing indicates your laptop has power, then the problem is power related.
A local repair shop or expert is useless when repairing laptop with a major problem such as motherboard, just one simply reason: they never have parts of any laptop to do a repair.
I suspect your motherboard goes south due to overheating.

 

If I could access the BIOS, I could. However, absolutely nothing at all happens when I press the power button. I've tried holding it down for half a minute and haven't gotten so much as a flicker.

I wish I could. As it is, the notebook is a brick. There is no way for me to run any kind of software; I can't even get the thing to turn on.

I cleared out a substantial amount of dust this morning after it died.

The fan's purpose is cooling. If I had a bad fan, that would support the hypothesis that the system overheated, due to inadequate cooling.

I pretty much conceded that I thought the system failure was due to the fact that it overheated. Given that I didn't have problems when clocking the CPU to max when I first bought the system, it's reasonable to assume that the problem now is the accumulation of a year and a half's worth of dirt.

When I plug it in to the wall, the LED around the power socket lights up, so I assume that it's not a problem with the power supply.

Again, my problem is not that my system is overheating. That's all in the past. My system already overheated and presented me with a new problem: My notebook is now non-functional. I now have a brick, and I'm looking for ways to remedy this. I'm not looking for ways to monitor temperature; those would only be useful to me if I had a working notebook and not a brick. If I really did fry the motherboard, is there anything that can be done? I spent most of the morning searching HP's website for repair options and I couldn't find anything available to me if my system isn't covered by warranty.

 

Hi! I was in a similar situation as you. My DV2000 had to be sent in after its 1 year warranty due to overheating. It was covered by an extended warranty, no cost to me. HP replaced my motherboard and heat sink and sent it back to me real quickly. Once I got it back, it lasted for about 30 minutes before it died. The power ring would light up but that was it. I had to send it back to HP and they replaced the motherboard again and when I got it back it died... AGAIN. I have no problem what happened to my notebook after HP repaired it but I assume it would have to do with the heating system that they replaced. In conclusion, HP issued me a brand new $1,500 HP DV4T, but it took countless hours and multiple case managers to get everything resolved. Check to see if your notebook is covered by HP's extended warranty program and get in touch with a case manager. Good luck and hope I somewhat helped.

 

Notebooks have a thermal protection that stops them from self destructing. It either downclocks or shuts off aka Intel Thermal Monitor 1 & 2

Take out the battery and AC power, hold the power button for 30 seconds

Now only with AC power, Try starting up the notebook using the Express card remote power button.

 

If you do get it running , event veiwer might want to be the first thing you check out. I know it's a bit late now, but in future a significant event as this might of be worth viewing and could of saved dealing with the likes of us, which is always a good thing.

 

I never applied for an extended warranty during the purchasing process and I checked with my serial number on HP's website, they said that my warranty has expired. Is there still the possibility of my being able to pay HP to make repairs to my system? I'm going to try calling their customer support line tomorrow when I have the time (I've been told by others that I should be prepared to spend at least an hour on the phone) but I think it would be best to figure out what questions I'm going to ask.

Also, factoring Moore's law, what is the chance that I could just buy a new machine for the cost of what it would cost to pay for repairs? I originally bought the machine for $1337 (does not include after-market memory upgrade). For $750, I could get a dv5t with the same processor. Main cons of this is that it's a smaller display (15.4 inches instead of 17) and has a lower-end video card (ATI Radeon 3450 instead of NIVIDA GF 7600), but it comes with a larger hard drive and more memory.

 

You DO NOT have to register for the extended warranty. Here is information on it. If worst comes to worst, HP should replace it for you with a new notebook of "equal or greater value".
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...77&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=1842189&lang=en

 

Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention. You just made my life a whole lot easier.

 

unfortunately, your notebook has an Intel CPU and is not going to be covered by the service enhancement which only covers AMD models with Nvidia chipsets. Most likely your board is fried. As far as a new unit goes, if you did go ATI I think you would be pleasantly suprised that the 3450 is close to the performance of your geForce 7600. Just a guess but the cost of replacing the board (with labor and taxes) on this unit is probably in the $400 range. If HP is like most other companies and you went through them to fix it they would give you a 90 day repair warranty with that and if they're nice free shipping.

 

Sorry I missed the part of your original post where you said you can't boot up.

What's the Product # on your system (PRODUCT, not Model)? Should end with ABA or similar. Never assume anything that HP support tells you these days is true. They've become that bad.

There is a Limited Warranty Service Extension for certain HP Systems (including yours) that have had similar power-up problems, but it depends on the Product # as to whether or not your system is eligible. If it is, they'll FEDEX you a box, fix it for free and send it back within a few days. It makes no difference if your system's original warranty has expired or not - it's a design problem they've agreed to fix free of charge. I've already had one client and a close friend send their systems in. My friend got his box on a Tuesday, FEDEX'd back to HP on their dime, and he got it back by Friday. Can't beat that.

You can check your system Product # against the list at the Warranty site:
http://tinyurl.com/8ryqt5

If you scroll down to your system's area, you'll note the symptoms in section 2 for non-functional systems. If your system is eligible, follow the instructions to get it fixed. They don't need to know how it got that way, only that your symptoms meet the repair criteria. If they ask, tell them you don't know why it won't start, which is true. Make sure that you won't lose any data though - ask them about your drive data as well.

PM me and let me know how you make out.

 

Well, the website told me that my warranty has expired which confirms what the little sticker with my product number and serial number reports: the sticker says "Warranty: 1 year" and I've owned it for more than a year.

My product number is EZ345AV (it has an Intel chip) and isn't listed as one of the products eligible for the warranty extension program, unfortunately. I've contacted HP regarding this problem.

 

Update: I tried messing around with different memory configurations (on the offchance that the problem was caused by faulty memory) and didn't have any success, my machine still won't turn on. I just called up HP customer support and decided to pay to have them fix the machine. (They said that a box with pre-paid shipping should be arriving in tomorrow's mail.) The repair cost ended up being only slightly more than it would have cost to purchase an extended service plan, so I guess I can think of it as a retroactively purchasing a warranty.

All things considered, I'm not too upset with how things turned out. Fortunately, the ordeal happened when I was on holiday so I wasn't in the middle of anything work-related, and my hardware failure persuaded me to leave the house during holiday to get some exercise.

I think the moral of the story is that if you suspect that your computer is suffering from heating problems, you shouldn't wait until after the third crash to start blowing out dust. Or, don't wait until after you've had a laptop for over 18 months to check vents for dust.

Another thing I noticed when telling people about this experience orally is that my machine was running foobar at the time it died. (Try saying the application name out loud.)

Thanks everyone for your help; out of all of the places that I asked, this forum was by far the most responsive and helpful.

Edit: One more thing I just realized. The dv9000t has slots for two hard drives, but I bought it with only one hard drive and in order to insert a second hard drive I'd need an additional SATA connector and caddy. I wonder if it's worth asking HP if they'd throw these in for no additional cost.