PDA

View Full Version : Dell Inspiron 1150 problem: spontaneous heat/slowing


flipgeek
06-03-2006, 01:36 AM
Hey all. I found this forum through google...

Anyways, here is my dilemma:

A week ago, my laptop over-heated... I knew something was wrong when the BIOS has to kill power to the computer and it gave me a messege at the next boot saying, "The vent may be blocked by debris. Please clean it then reboot." I thought it was a one-time thing, especially since I cleaned it afterward. It happened 5 more times over the week, and it has never done this during the ownership of the laptop... I bought a cooling fan mat from Targus to try to stop overheating. It has happened twice since the mat.

Second problem:
During that fateful week, the computer also has started to slow down... I mean SLOW! To verify that it was slow, I played a video on that laptop, and on another with lower specs...( Slower processor) I'd say the video ran at about 5 FPS (Frames per second) on the Overheating dell, while it ran about 30 FPS on the weaker computer. I have done antivirus scans with Trend Micro Antivirus and scanned with Spybot:Search and Destroy for other malware. When they turned up clean, I went into MSCONFIG and didn't see anything abnormal and I went into process under the task manager and didn't see any new processes... I am very sure that it's clean, so I am beginning to think it is clean. The laptop is about 1.5 years old, so it is not too old.

Here is a little more info:
Dell Inspiron 1150
2.6 GHZ Intel Celeron Processor'

Installed programs:
Trend Micro Antivirus
Spybot: Search and Destroy
AIM 5.9
Openoffice

I hope there is something I have missed because the laptop is out of warrenty. Any help guys?

mjc
06-03-2006, 02:03 AM
I'm going to take a guess that it is a faulty cooling fan. Most laptop CPUs will cut speed, tremendously, to save power or prevent overheating.

I don't know if there is any temp monitors available in BIOS but you can check...also look for fan speed. Laptops may not have them...off the shelf systems may not have them...off the shelf laptops very unlikely.

There is also the chance that the drive could be failing...if you know the manufacturer of the drive, running their diagnostics would be a good idea.