Dell Inspiron 5100 Overheating

[jhoppe]

Good Morning all,

I am about to be working on a dell inspiron 5100 which randomly shuts down and will not turn back on until it has cooled down. This laptop is no longer under warrenty, so my question is, if the CPU fan is still spinning, how does one diagnose on a laptop what needs to be replaced or fixed to fix the over heating issue?

 

[MHCG]

Usually it's a case of the heatsink either being plugged up with dog and cat hair, or heatsink grease needing to be replaced. Check to make sure they have plenty of airflow out of their exhaust ports. If the airflow is restricted and hot, chances are you need to clean it out.

Also, check the BIOS to see if there is any kind of error log. Some have logs that give overtemp CPU, overtemp Hard drive or overtemp PSU errors.

 

[jhoppe]

It looks like you are correct...the heatsink is most likely plugged up with massive amounts of dust. I did a quick search after posting and apparently the 5100 has a defect that 5150 does not in the design of the heat sink, therefore not allowing dust to be blown out of the case. Dell's solution is a workaround, not a fix, which is to replace the mobo (and cleaning out the heatsink in the process). So basically, I will tear about the case, throughly air dust it out, and let the client know to blow inside the fan vent biweekly to keep it clean (seen as a working fix on numerous dell forums).

Thanks for the direction, MHCG