Laptop Overheating Causes Shut Down, troubleshooting laptop computer

Note that these steps correspond with decision points on the flowchart and are reached directly by clicking on the diamond symbols. The text below cannot be read sequentially.

Smoke or burning odor? Never play with fire. If you see smoke or smell a burning odor, it’s not something you can afford to ignore. In some instances, brand new laptops will give off a bit of odor when they are first powered on that smells a little like hot plastic and a little like the ocean. In any other situation, smoke or smells coming from your laptop are not normal. If you recently spilled something on the laptop (shut down immediately) and have already dried it out and cleaned it to the best of your ability (or your repair person’s ability), there may be a little residual burning off the first time you run the laptop and get it up to operating temperature.

High air temp or sun? All laptops will overheat if you use them in a cruel enough environment. Obvious examples are stifling hot attics, vehicles without air conditioning in the summer and placed on hot surfaces. Hot surfaces aren’t limited to radiators or desks touching steam pipes, they also include dark surfaces the get a lot of direct sunlight, even if they are located indoors. Using a laptop outside in direct sunlight in the summer is more than a problem for your eyes, it’s also likely to lead to overheating. Notebook computers are entirely reliant on air flow for cooling, and the higher the ambient air temperature, the less the laptop will be able to cool itself.

Is battery too hot? Some people are more sensitive to temperature than others, so using "too hot to touch" isn’t a great troubleshooting technique. Unfortunately, very few people have a thermometer around capable of measuring temperatures through the normal operation range of a battery, including most computer technicians, so touch is all most people will have to go on. If the battery seems excessively hot, first shut down, check the web to see if it’s been included in a recall or if a hot battery is typical of the the particular laptop model. Then proceed to the battery troubleshooting flowchart.

Fan never runs? Most laptop users are accustomed to hearing the cooling fan(s) straining away during certain intensive computing operations, and even the quietest, best behaved notebooks normally run the fan at low RPMs during normal operation. If the fan never runs, it doesn’t mean your laptop is overheating, but it does mean that something may be wrong with the fan or the settings. If something is wrong with the fan or the temperature controller, eventually the laptop will overheat, unless you do all of your work in a walk in freezer.

Recent upgrade of BIOS? Anecdotally speaking, it seems that "my fan never comes on anymore" problems often occur after a BIOS upgrade. Manufacturers generally encourage users to install the latest BIOS version available for the model on the manufacturer’s website, and if you call tech support with an in-warranty fan or overheating problem, the first thing they are likely to do is tell you to upgrade to the latest BIOS. The problem is, the notebook really should operate normally with the BIOS version you purchased it with, or they shouldn’t have sold it to you. If you want to add new peripherals or upgrade an internal component and it’s not supported unless you upgrade the BIOS, you don’t have much choice. Outside of that, I avoid BIOS upgrades like the plague, keeping in mind that a failed upgrade can leave you with a paperweight that can only be repaired by sending it out. If the fan problem appeared after you upgraded the BIOS and the laptop which was operating fine originally is now overheating, I’d try reinstalling the original BIOS if available.

Cool settings BIOS and OS? - There’s no universal standard for what BIOS settings are user adjustable for a given brand or model of laptop. If you can lower the temperature at with the fan automatically powers up and you’re having overheating problems, it can’t hurt to do so, though you should also try the less invasive cleaning techniques given at the end of this flowchart. There are a large number of OS (Operating System) settings that affect the amount of heat the laptop will generate, from the speed of the processor and the brightness of the screen to the efficiency of the cooling system. The manufacturers try to give the user as much control as possible, but if you or another user ran the cooling control down to the minimum to reduce fan noise or extend battery life, it may be time to compromise.

On the other hand, if the settings are all on the defaults, the fan never comes on, and the system is overheating, it’s either a fan failure or a problem with the control circuit. The fan itself is a replaceable DC fan that usually can be replaced without removing the heatsink (if it’s mounted directly on the CPU or graphics processor). One simple test for notebook fans is to blow on them. If the fan doesn’t spin, either the bearing has failed or something is melted or jammed, because the motors are tiny. Testing the control circuit is an open-unit bench job that I don’t recommend unless you are an experienced technician. It’s easier to just replace the fan with a known good unit, and if it still doesn’t work the problem is in the controller or the power supply to the fan.

Laptop on hard, flat surface? I have to believe that the leading cause of laptop overheating is what engineers call "poor siting". Notebook computers are designed to run on flat level surfaces, with at least a couple inches of unobstructed space all around. Running a laptop computer sitting in the opened shoulder bag on your lap is a great way to block intake and exhaust vents and overheat the poor computer. Running on a bed is equally bad for laptops that have vents on the bottom, and if it’s a soft bed or there are loose sheets and blankets, the side vents can get blocked as well. Running on your lap is generally discouraged or forbidden by manufacturers. But many of us do at times anyway, and it’s important not to block air vents on the bottom, which may be impossible on some models. If you’re troubleshooting an intermittent laptop overheating problem, the first check is to pick a nice cool place with a large flat surface to run the notebook and see if the problem stays away. Keep in mind that the laptop automatically shuts off to protect itself (and your investment), not to be a nusiance.

Laptop shuts down? Computers may not be smarter than people, but if they’re designed properly, they will shut themselves down before overheating to the extent that they do themselves damage. If the smart person keeps turning the notebook back on and figures out a way to foil the protection, the laptop is probably doomed. Once a laptop shuts down for thermal event protection, it may refuse to power back up for a fixed period of time, five or ten minutes, or it may begin to boot and shut down immediately as soon as it boots to the point that it can figure out that its too hot. The over-temperature protection is generally a BIOS rather than an operating system function, so one sign of an overheated laptop is one that shuts itself down while you’re using it and then refuses to boot as far as the operating system unless you leave it alone for an hour or so to cool down. Unless you’ve been working in a very unfriendly environment, high temperatures, direct sunlight, etc, you should take even a single overheating shutdown as a warning to back up your data at the first opportunity and to give the cooling system a serious cleaning.

Hot spot, fan always runs? Many laptop brands and models have characteristic hot spots, like a particular corner of the keyboard or over the battery compartment. Before proceeding with the more invasive cleaning techniques that involve opening up the laptop (and potentially breaking something), spend some time searching the web for user feedback on your make and model. The bothersome hot spot on your laptop that none of your friends or colleagues have ever hear of may be a characteristic issue with your particular model and not worth a major panic.Similarly, if the fan always runs, or almost always runs, it may be a characteristic of the particular model that it simply gets hot in normal operation, or the fan control software might be poorly conceived. As long as the laptop isn’t overheating, I’d probably learn to live with a fan that seems to run too much if it’s typical for the model, and only get worried when I don’t hear it anymore.

Data loss, lockups? Troubleshooting all of the software problems that can cause data loss, bring on a blue screen of death or a frozen process is beyond the scope of page sized flowcharts. Overheating of the CPU, the RAM or the heard drive can cause data corruption and lead to the laptop locking up, but overheating is only one of many potential culprits. If you aren’t having any performance related problems, it’s possible that your laptop isn’t overheating at all (or you took a wrong turn on the flowchart), so you might start over at the top or try another flowchart that more closely matches the symptoms of the problem the notebook is experiencing.

Same problem low temperature? If you wait until the laptop is completely cooled down (overnight), use it in a friendly temperature environment and the errors you are seeing still occur as soon as you boot, odds are if the problem is related to overheating, the damage is already done and you now have a hardware failure problem. Checking the other flowchart for motherboard, CPU and RAM troubleshooting may narrow down the problem. If the problems don’t immediately come back when the laptop is first booted cold, but only appear once it heats up, it’s possible that a thorough cleaning and inspection will help clear up the problem causing the overheating, and no hardware replacement will be necessary.

Low battery, boot order? The default setting for most laptops when they reach a critically low battery state is to go into hibernation, the quickest way they can save any data in open applications and drop into a low power state until the AC adapter is connected. If the battery has failed and won’t accept a charge, if there’s a problem with the AC adapter, or if the operating system software isn’t as clever as it should be, the system may get locked into a loop where as soon as the operating system boots to the point it can identify a battery problem, it goes back into hibernation waiting for salvation. I’ve even heard of instances of laptops continuing this behavior with the battery removed! If the battery and AC adapter are good, the slow fix is to let it charge for a while before trying to boot. If that doesn’t work, try changing the boot order in the BIOS to the CD/DVD, just to break the loop.