HEL80 Shutting Down Unexpectedly

Hello all,

I've been having a problem with my 3-week old HEL80. It is shutting down unexpectedly while I am using it. It shut down today 3 times in the course of an hour. I'm running Windows Vista, so I thought it might be something to do with that, but I booted up a copy of Ubuntu and it happened while I was using Ubuntu too! I'm at a loss; anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,
ripple01

 

Can you narrow it down a little more? What applications are you running at the time? Have you just recently installed something or upgraded anything?

Have you run any virus scans to make sure it's not a virus or spyware?

 

Thanks for your reply, chrisyano. I was running Firefox and doing some web browsing, that's it. I am currently running avast 4.7 on Vista and it hasn't reported anything out of the ordinary. I will do a full system scan just to ensure there are no problems.

I'm leaning towards believeing that it is something else, seeing that it happened while I was using Ubuntu as well. Is it possible to contract a virus for Windows and have it effect other OS's as well?

Anyone else have any suggestions for me? Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
ripple01

 

First thing to do: check temperatures.

 

Agree with Ice-Tea. Check if you're fan is running at all.

 

I have noticed my fan running at regular intervals, so I don't think it's a heating issue, but I could always be wrong. What's the best way to go about checking for thermal issues?

Let me describe the situation I had tonight: I had to go out to Long Island tonight and I took the HEL80 with me on the train. I played Civilization 4 for about an hour with no problems and got off the train. When I got back on the train a little over an hour later, I fired up the laptop again, but this time I got about halfway through the boot process and it shut off! I removed the battery and started again and it started the boot process, but shut off again. Weird.

Would it be possible to have a bad battery of some kind? For some reason, I think that these problems are only happening when the computer is not plugged in. I want to run some more tests and find out for sure, but when I first got the computer, I ran it plugged in for a while when I was installing Vista and all my software and configuring everything and I didn't have any problems.

Thanks,
ripple01

 

Have you done any BIOS upgrades?

When you're running it on battery and it shuts off, do you need to plug it in before it will work again? Seems obvious enough, but if you can get it running after a shut-down while still on the same charge, it's not likely a battery issue.

Read through the cooling guide. There's a lot of information about how to monitor the temperature of your notebook.

You may also want to get in touch with your tech support to see what they have to say in terms of troubleshooting.

Good luck.

 

Temp checking: Rivatuner for GPU temp, NHC for CPU temp.

You may also want to go My Computer (right click) -> Properties -> Advanced -> Startup recovery -> uncheck "auto restart"

This allows the BSOD to be displayed. The error message might give you a hint.

 

I had this problem, the fan was screwed in too tightly preventing it from freely spinning sometimes. I backed off the screws about 2 turns and it works.

 

Just had one machine doing that. We sold a machine to a guy that decided to put it together himself. He had a heating issue. He decided to remove the thermal transfer label from the heatsink (coz he read it somewhere). A bit of thermal paste and he was set to go.

Another common issue is the length of the "left" screw holding the keyboard down. if it is too long it goes through the fan casing and stops the fan spinning.

Hope this helps

Gadget

 

And this, folks, is what we call a design flaw.

 

Unless of course, the person assembling the unit uses the wrong screw there.

 

can we consider possibly a bad stick(s) of RAM?

 

Thanks for all your replies, folks. Now it is getting even worse, the computer won't even boot to the desktop, it just shuts off, or the screen just shuts off with computer still running and I have to unplug it to get it to turn off. This happens with or without the battery and when it's plugged in. I'm calling powernotebooks today to find out what I should do next.

Thanks,
ripple01

 

You think that`s a problem? When you remove the backpanel from the P71 chasis (FSC Amilo, AW 5700,...) you have some short screws and one long screw. Misplacing that one pierces the graphics card.

 

I have a similar problem with my new acer aspire 5672 notebook, randomly my notebook shuts off and I just can't figure out what is the problem, I've run memtest and I dont get any errors.

Please help me guys, this is my first notebook and I was so excited

 

I was reading a review by Chrisyano last night, and I remember him mentioning something about a suspend issue with the Hel-80. I don't know if this will help or not, but here's the link to the review scroll down a bit and there's a link to a Hotfix.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3342

 

5762 is probably having the thermal protection kick on... Those have serious heat issues that have been addressed on MANY forums..

 

Great news everyone!

For kicks and giggles, I tried the solution that dragonrage presented on the first page and I think it worked! I loosened the screws holding in the fan about two turns, and I've been able to succesfully use the machine for the past 2 days with no problems! If anyone else has this problem with their HEL80, I strongly suggest trying this.

Thanks dragonrage, and everyone else who gave suggestions on this thread.

ripple01

 

I am also having a problem with my hel80 shutting down when it gets hot. When I first got it, I could play F.E.A.R. for like 2 hrs and it wouldn't shut down. Now it randomly shuts off while playing games. Where is the screw for the fan located. Maybe i can give it a try.
Thanks

 

If you turn your notebook over, it should be pretty evident which panel to remove. It should be quite easy from there.

Also, have you installed all the patches for your game yet?

 

Thanks. I have all the patches installed. Like I said, it never used to shut down, but it seems to lately. It does seem like it gets hotter than it used to just by feeling the metal area that is over the fan. I even tried turning off the overclock on the graphics card, but it still shut off. It doesn't shut off right away...it takes like 30-45 mins or so. I know that the fan is running because I can see it going through the vent. I have AS5 too.

Alright, I got the vent off the fan and tried blowing the dust out. There was one pretty good sized dust ball in between the fan blades. Maybe that had something to do with it.

 

Hopefully this will solve your problem. Remember to clean out your fan regularly.