Laptop Switches Off

[amjedm]

I'm trying to help a friend of a friend out regarding a problem with a laptop and need some advice please.

It's a Compaq Presario (17" screen) A900 and the problem reported was it switches off after an hour's usage. I first suspected it was a GPU (Nvidia issues anyone?) or the CPU was overheating due to clogged up vents.

Had a look at the laptop and it's not an Nvidia GPU, it's Intel. The vents appeared dust free.

Spent over 2 hours today (with a lot of help from my brother in law) and opened up the laptop to motherboard level. Why do Compaq have to make it so difficult to just get to the fan/heatsink

Vents and fan completely dust free
Removed heatsink module and replaced the thermal paste on the CPU
There was a thick pad on the heatpipe section that touches the GPU, this type of pad appears to be more for dampening than heat transfer. I couldn't remove it and put paste on as the heatpipe would have never touched the GPU

Put it back together and thank God it still worked as it was the first time I opened up a laptop

Fan still ramps up regularly and I haven't tested it for an hour but I suspect it will switch off

Any ideas please?

[Splash]

Always after an hour? Check the logs.

[Agent]

As above - could be software. Is it dead on an hour, or with a bit of leeway?

Sadly Compaq/HP are trash when it comes to laptops

[amjedm]

Always after an hour? Check the logs.

Will do. Roughtly an hour and a half - she said it was whilst she was watching something on YouTube and I thought that uses lots of CPU so overheating.

As above - could be software. Is it dead on an hour, or with a bit of leeway?

Sadly Compaq/HP are trash when it comes to laptops

Bit of leeway.

I'm going to recommend she doesn't buy HP/Compaq again.

[Agent]

Try using a Linux live disk and see if you experience the same symptoms, otherwise safemode / another OS install on another drive if you can.

[amjedm]

Try using a Linux live disk and see if you experience the same symptoms, otherwise safemode / another OS install on another drive if you can.

The first thing I did when I got the laptop was to try running MemTest to check RAM, fan was on full during the brief testing as the laptop switched off within a few minutes

Tried again and same thing.

Booted in to Windows and it was still on full throttle.

Still need to check logs but busy weekend...

[Jonj1611]

If it has one, has the pin broken off the middle of the connector from the power supply that goes into the laptop?

Seen something similar before where the middle pin had broken off, the laptop thought it was charging, but it wasnt' receiving enough current, so it was on for a bit, but was slowly discharging all the time until it went off.

Regards