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Laptop Problems

Hello, I recently received a 'free' laptop it is a bit dated and spending some time with it I have yet to solve the problem of what is really wrong with this thing. The laptop itself is just HP Pavilion XH365, 800mhz celeron/256mb ram. My main intention was to use this with my old Orinoco card for some wifi fun.

The unit powers off unexpectedly and the power/hard disk activity lights are the only ones active. Now this power off can happen at almost any given time. Sometimes it will only run for 5 minutes to even 3-4 hours. These times also are around the same with system being off for a long period of time. My guess was a heat problem. I've ran the system with it mostly a part and felt for hot spots. The S3 Savage chip felt it was getting a bit warm so I made a shim to connect the chip to dissipate the heat along the frame rails. I've removed the heat sink and cleaned it along with the cpu. I then applied a fair amount of Artic Silver 5 to see if that would help. It made no difference at all. The only thing I've seen make a difference is the screws that secure the heatsink to the motherboard are spring loaded and the closer I get them to being equal the better results I get ( of course). So I was thinking that under 5 minute runs were then due to the fact the heatsink was not evenly applied to the cpu.

Well then this is where I thought I should focus my attention on. So after running it and using a few temperature applications, I noticed that the fan is not turning on until after 70C+ this cannot be right? I have no bios settings to change this and I couldn't find any 5v line on that side of the board to rig the fan to run non-stop to see if this is the problem. Sometimes though it seems that the temperature does not even get this hot before a power off. Here is a list of things I've tried.

Clean CPU/New Thermal Paste
GPU / make shift heatsink
Booted No Hard Drive(ran memory checkers from CD)
Booted no Hard Drive or CD-Rom and let it sit at the Bios
Removed Ram one at a time and then tried a 3rd stick
Ran no Battery/Use 2 different AC adaptors
Ran with external hookups VGA to see if the screen was faulty

I have still not found the source of this problem. I have 3 things I can think of: 1.) CPU is shit(besides being shit spec wise) 2.) Heat Pipe on heatsink is messed up. 3.) Some type of safety switch on the motherboard is getting a bad temperature reading and shutting down the board.

Anyone have any ideas or suggestions? Besides the obvious sledge hammer quick fix?

A. The fans are switch controlled. This means that they kick on briefly during post to verify that they are there, and then only when the temp senors tell them to come on. There is rarely a bios setting for this.

B.) Initially I would agree on the assessment of heat, but if it was heat, the entire machine would power off. As it stands, only part of the machine is powering off (unless I misunderstood) which usually means something more dastardly is happening. Most likely the video chip is fried or a micro cap is blown. In either case, Kiss the machine bye bye. (have you tested the video output with and external monitor, if it displays when the "power down" occurs, then you are looking at display panel most likely.)

All in all, I'd say you pretty much got what you paid for out of the thing. Most any repair that you do to the machine is going to cost as much as a new one in most cases.

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Yeah I've seen limited bios options for the temperature control, shutdown settings. I figured I'd say it before someone asked though. I've hooked it up to external monitor and it also stops displaying. I dropped the laptop off for someone else to inspect, I assume he'll say the same thing. I have no idea what the temp sensors on the motherboard look like so if he says something similar I will probably just rig the fan to constant power and if that fails, I'll just scrap the system.

Thanks for the sugestions