What an Unpleasant Surprise...

Hey,

So last night, I left my laptop on because it was downloading some things. In the morning, I did not check up on it before going to school, because I assumed that the download was not over. However, when I came back from school, I noticed that there was a fairly thick comforter/blanket on top of my laptop. When I removed the blanket, the notebook was extremely hot. The colors of the screen were weird (Brightness was not proper). What should I do? I immediately shut it down and not it is just resting, for I am waiting for it to cool. What happened to the screen? I presume it overheated (Duh) and if my presumptions are correct, then why did it not shut down? What should I do right now to help it and what should I do to make sure that no internal components are damaged?

Thanks,
Vedya

 

cross your fingers

If it was permanently damaged by the heat, there is not anything you can do.

 

Your notebook pretty much cooked itself alive. The display is one of the most thermally sensitive components on a notebook and should not be closed while the notebook is operating, moreso with a blanket ontop of it. Display damage from heat is permanent and cannot be repaired. As for the rest of your notebook, clean out the vents and run a system memory test and GPU memory test. Also check your HDD for errors.

Only under certain conditions will your notebook shut itself down. If the CPU or GPU did not reach it's TJMax, it will not shut down. No other components will trigger the notebook to shut down from overheating. Since your notebook was just idling and downloading stuff in the background, the CPU and GPU were at their LFM and probably didn't produce enough heat to reach their shut down threshold. However, the display and the rest of the notebook suffered.

 

Some key things to point out that might make you feel better.

1) True that your system was hot and enveloped the heat during that duration of time.

2) True that LCD screens are very sensitive to heat (thats why we are not supposed to close the lid when the system is running).

3) If your system really did reach high temps, it would have shut it self off to prevent further heating damage.
- so this mean that though it might have reached some high temps, it was not at threshold temps yet since the system remained on.

Just do some diagnostics to test the stability of the main components to see if everything is ok
- CPU
- Videocard
- RAM
- HDD

If the LCD has been burned out or damaged, then you will probably have to replace that (around $100-200 depending on which type of panel you want to replace)

 

Why did you or another person put a blanket over it anyway?

 

If it was a roommate, I say face-punches are in order. If it was yourself, perhaps headbutting a wall should suffice. But seriously, run those system checks, and if your notebook is worth enough to you, consider replacing the LCD.

 

I am fairly positive that it was one of my parents...

I checked up on the temperatures of teh computer at actuall they were fine (thank goodness), fortunately, the GPU was not damaged. The LCD has reverted back to its previous color state. Although it is fine now, is there still a possibility of internal problem with the LCD and GPU?

 

There's always the possibility, but one could easily run a few benchmarks / stress-tests to determine that it is currently functioning as it should be.

 

Run some stress tests and get the temp up, if nothing is wrong then it should be fine. Just be more careful in the future.

 

I find that when my computer gets very hot that a large cup of water poured on the keyboard helps it cool down quite fast. Very effective.

 

Strange, when I did that, on accident, it stopped working entirely for the next day.

 

You`re doing it wrong.

 

I just submerse the entire notebook in a bath of ice water...

 

Pfffff. Ice water. Use something manly like liquid helium.

 

Or superfluid hydrogen...

 

Ahh, but can it be contained for suicide OC runs?

 

you got really lucky, i think it's time you have the "don't leave the laptop on the couch, carpet, bed, or anything that blocks the vents" talk with your parents.

my GF's HP laptop is basically fried for the same reason, she would just leave it ontop of anything. While it still powers on, it's almost impossible to get to the heatsink to reapply thermal compound or replace the fan because the internal components have become so brittle and fragile from all the heat that even opening the panels might break something. I suspect the cpu heatsink thermal compound became brittle and came loose, so 1 core of the cpu cores shoots up to 80 celsius range real quick, while the other one is fine... maybe i'll give it another shot...

i don't know why it's so hard for people to understand, do they think the laptop is a magical thing that produces no heat and the vents on the bottom are just for show?

 

Well basically it SHOULD shut itself down before the heat damages any of the components. But the truth is, it doesn't really do that...At least that's what my experience is.

 

I use Responsibility 2010 as my overheating failsafe.

 

Is that the enterprise version? I only have Personal Responsibility..

 

Enterprise Responsibility has been vaporware for years.

 

Even of your stress tests don't cause any stability issues remember that the life expectancy of your notebook as been adversely effected, most notably the HHD, as they are very sensitive to heat. I strongly recommend you back up all your data ASAP to an external drive or DVD-R to help lessen the sting in the event of a HHD failure.

 

I would imagine this would actually work assuming you have a spill-proof keyboard.

 

Unfortunately, most laptops don't...