The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    W500 Overheats & Shuts Down

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by nivla, Sep 15, 2009.

  1. nivla

    nivla Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    65
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    My W500 recently started overheating and powers off immediately. I'm sending it in to Lenovo to have a look at but wanted to know if anyone here had a similar issue and what the specifically the issue was. thanks

    4061-32u
     
    nivla, Sep 15, 2009
    #1
  2. kevroc

    kevroc Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    69
    Messages:
    383
    Likes Received:
    15
    Trophy Points:
    31
    No problems here. Did you have it in integrated or discreet graphics mode? Maybe a fan went out on your system??
     
    kevroc, Sep 15, 2009
    #2
  3. nivla

    nivla Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    65
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Could be a fan, they replaced the motherboard a couple of weeks ago because of a video issue. I'm using discreet graphics w/ Windows 7 RTM.
     
    nivla, Sep 15, 2009
    #3
  4. Mark@Lenovo

    Mark@Lenovo Company Representative

    Reputations:
    166
    Messages:
    58
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    nivla,

    Sorry to hear that you had trouble and required service. So, you are saying that you think the W500 is now overheating and shutting down after the depot replaced the system board?

    That could be possible if the thermal compound were not properly applied and or the heat sinks and the clamps for them not installed properly. I've seen cases where some wires running through the system were trapped under the heatsink during re-assembly and a system would only run about a min before shutting down. Simply re-routing the wires to ensure the heat sink was properly seated made all the difference.

    Does your fan run? How long does the system run before it shuts down? Is the time to shut down fairly consistent from a cold start?

    Lastly, I'm not challenging your diagnosis of thermal, but I'm curious as to what you've observed to lead you to believe that? Are you running some utility to pull CPU and GPU temps? If so, what is being reported?


    Best regards,

    Mark
     
    Mark@Lenovo, Sep 15, 2009
    #4
  5. nivla

    nivla Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    65
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Hi Mark - I can hear the fan running and the system shut down is fairly inconsistent. On three different occasions, I had data transferring to external hard drives when the shut down occurred. If the system is sitting idle or if I'm doing non-intense work - browsing web, document writing, etc. it doesn't seem to have the overheating issue. Watching videos, converting audio CDs to MP3, burning CDs/DVDs seem to be when it over heats and shuts down.

    I'm not monitoring the system temperature with any tools and my knowledge on how to do this or what exactly is happening internally with the system is limited.

    I had the system board replaced initially since the SD card reader eject mechanism was not working properly. The board was replaced incorrectly or with an incompatible system board for my machine type and I sent it in again for replacement. Since then, the system shutdown/overheating issue has been occurring.

    Thanks for the reply.
     
    nivla, Sep 15, 2009
    #5
  6. nivla

    nivla Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    65
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Lenovo replaced the system board and fan on the unit. Seems to be okay now but I'll be testing it a bit more with a playback of a few videos, large file transfers.

    Happy with Lenovo service overall - sent the unit in Weds night got it back Fri morning by 10:30.
     
    nivla, Sep 18, 2009
    #6
  7. t30power

    t30power Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    190
    Messages:
    778
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    t30power, Sep 18, 2009
    #7