Overheating woes and exchange damage

[shairi11]

My laptop is dying.

Correction: My laptop has died unexpectedly on several occassions in the past week, has then been ressurected by a very scared, anxious me, and has then repeated the entire process again. Several times. My cousin, who is much more techno savvy than I ever could be, tells me it is because my laptop is Overheating. But but but, I

Comments

[lariopefic]

Do you have it on one of those laptop stands? My understanding is that the fan is on the bottom, and if you sit the laptop down on a desk for long periods of time (or worse, on the covers--I like to read in bed) the laptop will overheat. My friend Jason says you buy this stand that holds it up slightly off the surface of the desk and allows air to flow underneath.

I have no idea if this is true, but I bought one of those stands at Walmart because he told me to.

[droxy]

what lariopefic says..

[shairi11]

Covers. The covers are the culprit. I have no access to a table at the moment (I know, wtf?! right?) so I'm having to make do. The laptop stand sounds like a good investment, I'll look into it. Was it exepensive?

Thank you very much for the advice! (Also, now that you have the laptop stand, is your laptop in a healthy condition?)

[droxy]

you need to make sure air circulates under your laptop and dust and hair is not clogging the fans.

[droxy]

You? cat hair problems..nah...LOL

[shairi11]

I hear ya. I'm going to be looking into getting a laptop fan/ stand thing soon, so hopefully that will be the end of my problems... and also maybe vaccuuming the laptop too.

Thanks!

[shairi11]

Will vaccuuming with a normal vaccum be safe for the laptop? Or will the pressure be too much? I have a suspicion the overheating is a combination of dust accummulating and air not being able to circulate at the bottom. At least I don't have to worry about cat hairs though. ;P

I don't really run many programmes at the same time... also I doubt I would know how to check the CPU usage (not very techno savvy), I don't think that's the problem. Still, I'm putting the laptop's power plan on power saver as opposed to high performance if that will help in anyway, lol.

And thank you! Your advice is *extremely* helpful. Also, I was relieved to hear that your laptop is doing well after all that - it gives me hope for my own!

[shairi11]

You're a star! I actually managed to check my CPU usage (yes, you were right, it is easy... still doesn't stop me from feeling accomplished though ;D) Although I did have to look up what 'strg' was, lol, even though I should have worked out it was the cntrl key! As it turns out my CPU usage seems to be 10% and under and the GB RAM is less than yours, so I'm guessing it's all ok at the moment.

Lol, the reason I asked about the hoover safety is because my cousin was telling me horror stories of the keyboard being sucked up, so thank you very much for the tip! :D And thank you so much for all the help and advice you've given me. I feel immensely better now. ^_^