Overheating?

[thebitguru]

Hi, I recently replaced the hinge on my X60 tablet because one side of the older hinge broke. Everything went well (no extra or missing screws, scratches on the boards, etc.), but now the system stays on for a few minutes (~5 minutes), but then hangs. If I force it to shutdown and try to turn it back on right away then the power light comes on, but the system does not boot and neither do I see anything on the screen (completely blank, i.e. it doesn't even turn on). Given the fact that it starts up OK when it is cold and runs for a few minutes, I am guessing that this might be a heating issue, but there wasn't much that I could do wrong from that perspective. I have pulled it apart once and put it back together to make sure that there wasn't anything that I misplaced, but that didn't make a difference. The system went out of warranty a little while back.

Does any one know where I might be messing up or anything that I can do to fix this?

Thanks!

[Stansfield]

Can you run any app to measure the temperature and tell us the results? You can try SpeedFan, it's light and should install before your system hangs. Then tell us the core temps, and we will see if it's really an overheating issue (personally I don't think so, if the CPU fan is running - and I assume you checked that it is - the system shouldn't overheat that fast, maybe after 15 min of running some heavy apps if there is some other problem).

[thebitguru]

Thanks for the quick reply.  SpeedFan shows the CPU temperatures (Core Duo) at 38C and 42C degrees right before the system hangs.  Heating was my first guess, but I agree that this might be too quick for that.  In the previous cases I actually ran a virtual machine that might have burdened the system a bit, but lately I have only been running the usual programs (Chrome, Win Explorer, etc.) and even then it takes the same amount of time before hanging.

[Stansfield · Accepted solution]

Definitely not overheating then.

My ideas would be a) the battery and b) the memory.

So first tell me, have you tried booting it without the battery, only on AC?

If the problem persists, then find a different RAM module and see if it works with it.

Oh, and the CPU fan works normally? Have you tried booting it with the keyboard out and seeing if the fan functions as it should? And I'm not thinking about overheating here, if the fan malfunctions it could be sending an error signal to the system which causes it to hang (like when it's down completely, then the system won't boot and display a "CPU fan error" message).

BTW, I had the same problem with the hinge, also one half broke off, but I had no issues replacing it (though it was done by my friend at a computer service, not by myself).

[thebitguru]

For simplification I was troubleshooting with the battery removed and even with the keyboard pretty much off of the system board area to see what was going now.

I took the 1GB module (2GB in total) and now it seems to be doing pretty good!  Knowing that this was a good memory module I put it back in and have had it on for at least 15 minutes and it seems to be going fine now.  So, previously I must not have put in the module correctly.

I am going to put it back together and work on this most of the day today to test it out, will report back.

Thanks a lot for your help!  My X60 is almost new again with a new and solid hinge =D

[Stansfield]

Yup, that's the first thing I've learned in the old times with PCs: when the comp starts, but something still goes wrong, then the first suspect is the memory. In your case it must have loosened when you disassembled the whole thing. Happens quite often.

Glad to be of help, you can give me my first kudos if you like

And the hinges in those tablets are clearly crap, don't know how about yours but mine broke completely by itself..

cheers

[thebitguru]

Oh, didn't know about Kudos.  There, done

I haven't had experience with other tablets, but I have used this tablet for quite some time (>2.5 years), opening, closing and rotating pretty much everyday.  I think the car/bus rides tend to be the worst because of all the short bursts of bounces.  So, based on my usage I guess I don't blame them, there is a limit to most materials.

http://www.thebitguru.com/site_media/uploads/attachments/247_Broken_Hinge.gif

I want to upgrade to a T410s when it comes out, but now I am so intimately familiar with this tablet that I might just wait a little longer

[Stansfield]

Well you're probably right, I've been using mine for around 2 years too when my hinge broke, and it looked exactly the same as yours. But since it's metal (and I don't switch it to tablet that often) I would think it should last longer.. 

As to upgrading, I'm surprised you want to switch to a regular laptop I'm only switching when my X61t gets reeeally outdated, and there's a new, much better Lenovo tablet available. For now I'm completely satisfied with what I have