laptop shuts off on own :(

[liquidmonkey]

hey,
my laptop has recently (last 2 weeks) started shutting down all on it own. sometimes it has happened while i'm using lightroom 2.0 but recently its happening while i'm playing quake III arena while having itunes running in the background. even if i turn off itunes, it still happens.
it also happens if i'm using a lot of hungry apps such as photoshop, itunes and dreamweaver all at the same time.

it even shut off the other day when using spybot.

i'm thinking this is an overheating issue but am stumped as i used to do all of these things with my laptop for a year now and never had the problems of it turning off all of a sudden.

each time its very warm underneath but i've even got the laptop raised off the desk a few cm's as its sitting on some cardboard at the right and left edges.

could my hardware be faulty by any chance?
any ideas what this could be?


LAPTOP
win XP PRO SP3
lenovo 3000 v100
1 gig ram (according to 'system') and it came with 1 gig of ram

i've also been running my laptop 24 / 7 the last 3 months but that shouldn't matter, should it?

any help is appreciated, thanks!

 

[rohan23]

YES! That makes a big difference. Do you get any tearing or artifacts on your screen? Try scanning for viruses, if you can get it to run that long. Your best bet would be to open the bottom of your laptop and clean out your heatsink. There is probably a lot of dirt blocking it up. Once you do that, reapply thermal paste onto the cpu. That should fix your problem.

 

[SuxoR]

My cousin had this problem a while back

check your drivers to make sure they are up to date (all major hardware)
Check your OS for viruses and spyware/trojans
Check your registry for any changes

And finally my cousins laptop would overheat and your computer will turn off to prevent permanent damage. Sounds like this is it since it happens when you run cpu heavy programs

Try buying a fan that sits underneath that cools them (about 20 bucks)
The last one is probably the problem but I'm just being careful :]

 

[IAntDemo]

laptops will not run 100% for ever.

I also have a feeling it's got alot to do with running Itunes and running a game, even tho it should handle it, but still, I think it's overheating.

What is your temp in the bios?

Does your Bios have a auto shut down if it goes over a certain celsius

 

[liquidmonkey]

thanks!
ended up getting the keyboard off in the end and vacuumed out the fan area. there was a bunch of dust and that seems to have done the trick! all is back to running no worries, nice and cool!

i'm getting on average....

HDD - 50 degree C
core1 - 50 degree C upto 80 degree C
core2 - same as core1

is that ok?