Rebooting in Circles – Laptop Overheats

Name: Christopher Smith

Hi,

My computer a Toshiba Satellite A35-S159 very often over heats and shuts off. horrible design by Toshiba engineers. Fans on the bottom to get air by the heat sink?

Anyhow I usually just restart my computer.

This time however when I restarted, it went to a safety mode restart.  I choose to restart normally, which it started to do. however, it only got to the Windows XP screen, where the little bar at the bottom starts to show the OS loading, didn’t even fully start the OS, and then it shutdown and the blue screen of death showed up for a split second.  It then went right back to the safety restart screen and the process keeps going in a loop. ( there is a 30 time limit set my Microsoft I guess)

Suggestions?

Thank you,

Chris

First off, what kind of surface are you using the laptop on? As I’ve pointed out in this Q&A, the machine needs to be used on a surface such as a table or something similar to allow air to circulate. Carpet, blankets, even your lap can constrict the airflow enough to make the modern processors overheat in a hurry.

The fact that it keeps rebooting on you is a safety precaution built into the BIOS to prevent damage to the hardware. When the machine is started up so soon after shutting down to overheating the processor is obviously still very hot. It’ll run for a bit until it gets over it’s safety threshold and then the machine shuts off to prevent the CPU from cooking itself.

Almost all laptops have vents on the bottom, so the design while perhaps not the best, it pretty common. (I mean, where else are they going to put the vents anyway? There’s not a lot of room on the sides of the laptop, and the keyboard just happens to be taking up the top… 🙂 )

Ensure that nothing is clogging the vents. You may want to attempt to blow it out with some canned air, and if there’s a more substantial blockage have a professional open the machine up and clean it. The CPU’s heatsink as well as any other heatsinks in the computer very likely at this point are jam-packed full of dust bunnies and dirt.

If this is not the case, it could be a faulty battery that’s overheating the computer, or some other component that happens to be running too hot due to a defect. In this case, you’ll likely have to RMA the machine, but that tends to be a MAJOR pain in the butt, and may not be possible if the machine is more than a year old, depending on the warranty.