Hardware Laptop keeps shutting off?

[bobfacemoo]

Okay so my laptop will often keep randomly shutting off by itself. It used to do this frequently when I left it idle but there was a setting in the BIOS of the laptop to stop it from doing so. It worked, until recently, and now the laptop will just shut itself off whenever it feels like it. The battery is fully working, so it's not a battery issue. The laptop does not overheat, so it's not a problem with that. I don't understand. I think a factory reset will fix it, however I'd rather not, I don't want to and then have to search for all the drivers, as well as back up all my data, since I have nowhere to store it.

OS is Win 7 Professional 64-bit

Ask for other specs if needed.

Any help to find out why this is happening will be appreciated~

 

[FAST6191]

Is it a hard shut off or somewhat graceful? Also not many bios settings will handle os level shutoffs like this for laptops (outside of servers I am not sure I have seen it other than those dual boot things with a cut down Linux in the BIOS level of stuff), most of the time shut down when idle things are controlled by the power management of the OS, windows very much included though you might have to go into the advanced settings/custom scheme part of it to get the good stuff. I have seen said power settings twiddled by updates, both windows and whatever crap the manufacturers make.

A factory reset will tend not to sort things like this, it might sort blue screen issues for drivers and the like but this is probably not that.

I would still look at heat for this one. There can be a difference between general overheating and something a bit more specific. I have had some odd ones over the years, including one that overheated when idle as the fan was not running so much and a non CPU and GPU thing needed that little bit more.

You say the battery works so I will believe that for now, however I would still test it as I have many that say 100%, 100%... 100% and then 20% if one of the cells has failed.

Finally if your restore does not handle the drivers and you have a semi working machine it is probably better to find the drivers before the refresh.

Make and model of the laptop might help in this, if it is still running 7 it might well be old enough to be one of the nice nvidia chips that cook themselves and full power lock up type stuff is something I saw with several of those.

 

[bobfacemoo]

Make and model is a Lenovo Thinkpad x201. I don't actually know specifics of when it'll have been manufactured etc. It's old enough to not have HDMI port though, if that helps ;p. The shutdown just happens. Runs fine then bam, complete shut down. Have to turn it back on by the power button, and it gives the "Windows did not shut down correctly" message with options to boot into Safe Mode, normal windows, etc. The battery is pretty much brand new, only been used for ~3 weeks.

 

[FAST6191]

Is it a battery you ordered from China/Hong Kong? I no more would buy such things from there than I would flash memory and hope it is good stuff.

Also it might not have HDMI but apparently it has displayport.

Anyway it seems others have had something like this http://www.tomsguide.com/forum/77968-35-lenovo-thinkpad-edge-overheat-shutdown-issue has some more. They all reckon some subtle flavour of overheating.

 

[bobfacemoo]

Alright, it was on 100% power which means turbo, so I changed it to 99% where it won't overclock. Lets see if this fixes it. Thanks for your help and I'll post if it didn't help!

 

[weatMod]

i have the exact same issue with my vaio fit i7 13" ultrabook running win 8.1 , it is always plugged into AC and it will randomly shut down sometimes right when i am typing and using it , it also shuts down a lot when i put it into sleep mode, i will put it in sleep before bed plugged in and when i wake it in the morning i find it has shut down
this all started around the time i started getting the update nags for win 10 i swear this is M$ way of punishing us for not updating to win 10 it all started when that damn "free win 10 upgrade" shit started

oh i also sent this thing in for warranty service less than a year before this started
and they changed the battery and the fan

and i also have an issue where my clock/calendar will just change by itself to random dates all the time ,sometimes it's only a few hours or days off and sometimes it sets itself to like the year 2036
it has a new battery and it's not that old so no way it is the cmos battery i can't figure out what is causing any of it

 

[RikuKawai]

i have the exact same issue with my vaio fit i7 13" ultrabook running win 8.1 , it is always plugged int o AC and it will randomly shut down sometimes right when i am typing and using it , it also shuts down a lot when i put it into sleep mode, i will put it in sleep before bed plugged in and when i wake it in the morning i find it has shut down
this all started around the time i started getting the update nags for win 10 i sweat this is M$ way of punishing us for not updating to win 10 it all started when that damn "free win 10 upgrade" shit started

oh i also sent this thing in for warranty service less than a year before this started
and they changed the battery and the fan

and i also have an issue where my clock/calendar will just change by itself to random dates all the time ,sometimes it a few hours or days off sometimes it set to like the year 2036
new battery and it's not that old no way it is the cmos battery i can't figure out what is causing any of it

I highly doubt it has anything to do with the Windows 10 upgrade, I don't think an OS can even cause a forceful shutdown intentionally.

 

[GearCross]

A good option to rule out some OS issues is to try and run with a live OS like Ubuntu or similar, which saves you the trouble of resetting your PC. Even just leaving it on the BIOS would be enough. Does it happen often? Have you actually monitored the temps (I know you state that thermals aren't an issue)? If a heatsink is not making proper contact with the CPU the heatsink will not get as warm neither will the air coming out of the fan exhaust but the CPU will heat up and you will not be aware of it if the fan doesn't spin up fast enough for you to hear.

 

[weatMod]

I highly doubt it has anything to do with the Windows 10 upgrade, I don't think an OS can even cause a forceful shutdown intentionally.

i would not put it past microshit to intentionally plant bugs to get people to upgrade
i would not put anything past any of these companies remember sony root kid CD's
it is certainly technologically possible for them to do it, they have full control over your system
are they doing it, who knows but it is awful strange that these issues all popped up right around that time
or maybe something they pushed to the system for the update nag unintentionally caused it

 

[RikuKawai]

Make and model is a Lenovo Thinkpad x201. I don't actually know specifics of when it'll have been manufactured etc. It's old enough to not have HDMI port though, if that helps ;p. The shutdown just happens. Runs fine then bam, complete shut down. Have to turn it back on by the power button, and it gives the "Windows did not shut down correctly" message with options to boot into Safe Mode, normal windows, etc. The battery is pretty much brand new, only been used for ~3 weeks.

I'm still going to guess overheating because it's a small laptop and a power hungry CPU. How many years has it been since you cleaned the fan? It might be bad enough to need disassembly to clean.

Download software like OpenHardwareMonitor or HWInfo, and set it to log temperatures, that way you can see temps right when it crashed.

 

[bobfacemoo]

I'm still going to guess overheating because it's a small laptop and a power hungry CPU. How many years has it been since you cleaned the fan? It might be bad enough to need disassembly to clean.

Download software like OpenHardwareMonitor or HWInfo, and set it to log temperatures, that way you can see temps right when it crashed.

I only bought it around 5 weeks ago, so I have no idea what the internals are like. The battery is definitely fine, it takes ~3 hours to completely die from 100%. I'll download OHM and see what happens when it next cuts off.

 

[RikuKawai]

I only bought it around 5 weeks ago, so I have no idea what the internals are like. The battery is definitely fine, it takes ~3 hours to completely die from 100%. I'll download OHM and see what happens when it next cuts off.

Used or refurbished? Also did you make sure to go to options and click log sensors?

 

[bobfacemoo]

Used or refurbished? Also did you make sure to go to options and click log sensors?

Refurbished. And no I didn't but now I did, thanks c:

 

[ILuvGames]

Just a suggestion :-

There should be a setting in the BIOS for fan management. It maybe that it is on passive and that having it on active makes a difference. You could try setting your power settings to balanced. Lenovo have their own power management software on the X201 AFAIK. It's possible that it is corrupted or there is some conflict between it and windows power managment although unlikely.

Other than that, the other posters in this thread are far more knowledgable than me with laptop hardware. Normally the X201's are very solid little things. I've bought 2 for other people and was gonna buy a third for myself cause I got them for a good price.

 

[bobfacemoo]

Okay so apparently the fix about changing the amount of power my laptop gives out didn't help. 2 cut-offs in 5 minutes just happened. Unfortunately, I don't have logs from OpenHardwareManager, however I saw the temperatures and they were ~65 degrees (working in celsius.) It said the max is ~67 so I think overheating is an issue :/ Any suggestions from now?

 

[Fishaman P]

Okay so apparently the fix about changing the amount of power my laptop gives out didn't help. 2 cut-offs in 5 minutes just happened. Unfortunately, I don't have logs from OpenHardwareManager, however I saw the temperatures and they were ~65 degrees (working in celsius.) It said the max is ~67 so I think overheating is an issue :/ Any suggestions from now?

That's not hot enough to cause thermal shutdown. That would be closer to 95C or even higher.
65C is perfectly normal for a laptop under decent use.

 

[bobfacemoo]

That's not hot enough to cause thermal shutdown. That would be closer to 95C or even higher.
65C is perfectly normal for a laptop under decent use.

So what can be causing it to just cut off completely? Really need to get to the bottom of this..

 

[bobfacemoo]

Okay so my laptop is STILL shutting down randomly and complete shut-off. Yesterday it did it and ran a CHKDSK before even booting the OS after turning it back on. It found lots of things and sorted them out I think, but it still keeps just shutting off. Virus free, too. I'm starting to think it is a hardware issue, but I wouldn't even know where to start looking.

 

[leonmagnus99]

do you have the power management programm of your laptop brand installed ?

 

[bobfacemoo]

do you have the power management programm of your laptop brand installed ?

I don't believe I do, I looked for it and could not find it.