Satellite Pro Laptops

[soooomad]

Yep. Watching RuPaul's Dragrace and screen goes black. No warning just complete shut down. Did it overheat or is it a Windows prob? I can turn it right back on of course it takes forever to get back to where I was. By the way it took 19 minutes to talk to a human at Toshiba support and even then it wasn't really talking because he didn't speak English. Please lend me your thoughts even though I am being bitchy about it.

[Peter · Accepted solution]

While I don't know for sure, that does sound like it could be overheating. Ensure the notebook as proper ventilation when using it. For example, don't let it sit on a bed or other surface into which it can sink. 

[SalmacisM]

My Satellite has been acting in the same way - however, my fans are cleaned and system and whole laptop are checked and it worked normal for about 2 days (and I've been working constantly in CAD, Photoshop and Corel). Then suddenly - same again!(
What I noticed is that it works fine for a while and then when the lamp for battery shows red and starts charging, I can hear some crackling and usually soon it turns off. If I don't shut it down by myself when the red lamp shows, but leave it to go on 5% of battery, it shuts down by itself suddenly. Also, what is weird is that the cable of AC adapter also becomes very hot in some places.
So what could be the problem? What should I do? I have no ideas anymore...

[Peter]

Try removing the battery. If the problem doesn't happen again, you'll know it's a bad battery. If it does happen, try running the computer without AC power and only battery to see if it's the AC adapter.

[soooomad]

Since I posted this I've been paying more attention to what's near/blocking the vents and it hasn't happened again. I must admit I usually watch Logo while under my feather comforter, laptop on lap. So the fluffiness may have been to blame  Any way, thanks for the help!

[Peter]

No problem!

[SalmacisM]

I was thinking myself to try something like that - when it's only on battery, it works though the battery needs new charging pretty soon 

So I'll try again  Thanks! 

[busmomT2]

Mine is doing the same thing It is a Sat. A215-S1518 I have it on a laptop holder so it gets plenty air flow and I keep it clean! I have tried with battery in and out... But after a while it still shuts down  I have not a clue..

[Peter]

It could still be heat related. If you haven't recently, use a can of compressed air with the laptop turned off to blow out the fans and vents. If the problem persists, you might want to have it serviced.

[Mr-Wizard]

I will suggest another method of keeping it cool and that is to search for the program called "TThrotle" which will allow you to monitor you CPU temps plus you can set the temp limit as to when it will start throttling the CPU back.

I used this while I was crunching numbers for the Boinc project, other wise it would use all 8 processors at 100% and the temp would get up to around 180 degrees F

I set mine for a max of 165F the max before the Toshiba shuts down is 100 C or 212 F

This program has helped out a lot for me, although a desktop would never run this hot, these laptops are really being severely beaten up!

---

Peter wrote:

It could still be heat related. If you haven't recently, use a can of compressed air with the laptop turned off to blow out the fans and vents. If the problem persists, you might want to have it serviced.

---

[mrhatman13]

I changed my power settings to full power when the power cable is unplugged and I haven't had the problem.  Has been a month now since my last incident.

Has been a couple months now with no issues since changing my power settings and still no random shutdown.  Will post again if I figure out why this setting change works.  

[MarkJS]

purchased a Satellite S855 in December 2012. It has a nifty Toshiba program that runs on the right side of the taskbar. It's called "Toshiba PC Health Monitor".

It has cool graphics containing battery information- charge, strength... and CPU temp and even Fan speed....

The only problem is that I don't know if I'll keep it on, as the TOU says that pc data is sent to Toshiba periodically.

[rayDatroublesho]

I replaced my cpu and gpu paste with a thermal pad bought off of ebay. The specs are one inch thich ..cut to the hieght and width of each component.....It is still overheating. My fan is cleaned ram is dusted and fan does turn on about 30 seconds after system boots.

[AltheEngineer]

Blowing the dust out of the fan worked fine and then it finally wouldn't come on today.  Thought it was hard drive, but turned out to be mother board.  On inspection there were dust balls in the channel to the heat fins at the output of the fan.  The repair list shows that as a $384 part with service included.  So keep it clean by blowing from the side of the laptop to get the dust out the bottom.