Laptop Shut Down.

[FederalBmx]

I have an Acer Aspire 3003LCI with 1Gig of ram and a 1.8 processor. My laptop just shuts off whenever It pleases like if i didnt have a battery in and unplugged it. Some days I'll be using it and watching youtube and it will just shut off. i decided to reinstall windows one day and while it was formatting my harddrive it shut off as well. Now im trying to install linux and wouldnt you know, last night it shut off. I'm assuming its a heat problem seeing as i have scars from when i fell asleep with it on my lap one night, and some lovely warping plastic on the bottom, and ive cleaned the fan, blew all dust out, and such. I took the battery out and ran it thinking the battery could block heat dissipation. right now im running it on a 15 degree angle on a double cd case so the bottom is in the air and has more air flow to it while im formatting it. Any suggestions?

[Sylvander]

1) Load and run Knoppix from a Knoppix Linux Live CD (http://www.knoppix.org/).
If the problem is still there, you can be pretty sure its not a software problem.
Hence, it's pretty certain to be...
a. A hardware problem [most likely].
OR
b. A BIOS [mis-]configuration problem.

2. Are there heat sensors on the CPU with configuration settings in the BIOS to specify at what high temperature the PC will be shut down?

3. Are there any indications in the BIOS Setup of the CPU temperatures detected?

[FederalBmx]

Im not gunna bother with the knoppix. im running out of cds and it doesnt like to load them all the time. but i know it must be a hardware problem becase when it happens at anytime. if its booting up, if im running a boot cd program, if its just sitting there doing nothing. to respond to the other awnsers. It cant be the bios. it happened when i bought my pc before i upgraded my bios or changed anything. there is nothing in the bios about heat or temperature safetys. and there are no indication about temperatures. any other suggestions? someone told me it might be the harddrive but i dno i dont really find that beleiveable. my laptop is only a year and 3 months old.


Edit: Now my laptop wont boot from cd anymore. I did right after i burned it but it took to long and and now i have it set to boot from cd and i have the newest ubuntu in but it doesnt recognize it and it says operating system not found. this is great.

[Sylvander]

"i have the newest ubuntu in but it doesnt recognize it and it says operating system not found"
1. Natural inclination is to think there's something wrong with the optical drive,but I bet not.
Too much of a coincidence for the drive to go faulty just by chance at the same time as the other problems.
The BIOS is trying to load the OS from the optical disk into RAM, but is failing to find the OS files on the disk [failure of the BIOS, or corrupted files?]
Perhaps inadequate power supply causing drive [or the BIOS] to function inadequately?
Could the CMOS battery be failing?

2. Does the laptop have a FDD?

3. "it happened when i bought my pc before i upgraded my bios or changed anything."
So you upgraded your BIOS?
And changed some hardware?
Any nasty effects afterward?

[FederalBmx]

i can open it and check stuff. i dno if the battery is failing. its possible, would the power supply cause it to overheat like it does possible?

an fdd? whats that? haha


nope. my bios upgrade went smoothly. i mean i did get some error but it said i might get it on the manufavturer site. the hardware i changed was i added a nother 512mb of ram and cleaned out the fan.

[Wandrille]

this would leave me to believe it is a heat problem also
the fan(s) are working good?
also if i were in your position and new a little info bout laptops
i would open it up and clean the heat pipes from the cpu also, make sure that the heatsink is on the cpu and has not somehow came of