If it were my machine, I would remove the fan (heat sink) from the cpu,
carefully clean off the cpu top and fan bottom, add a thin layer of
thermal grease and replace the fan.
This is based on the possibility that the computer is still overheating,
but taking longer to do it. I don't give this a real high probability
of helping, but it is easy to do and there is a reasonable probability
that this will cure the problem.
Any time that a computer crashes at about the same time after starting
(usually after booting to the operating system), no matter what program
is running, I would suspect a heat problem. Your problem is not quite
so simple, as it could be caused by all sorts of things. But, since
cleaning the fan helped the first time, remounting the fan is indicated.
Dean Kukral
----- Original Message -----
From: "Russ Cox" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 5:23 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] NEC laptop hangs
I acquired a NEC Vestra laptop w/ a Pentium M CPU, 768 MB RAM. It came
with no hard drive so I took one from another dead machine. I loaded
Win XP on it and discovered while loading that it would shut down after
awhile. Found the CPU cooler fan was plugged up with dust and not
turning. Cleaned out the fan and finished loading XP. Now it starts XP
to the XP splash screen and hangs. I have scrubbed the HDD and reloaded
XP Home a second time, same result. I have taken out the memory sticks
one at a time, no improvement. It will hang during startup in Safe mode
also.
Any thoughts on what might make it operate?
Visit our website regularly for FAQs,
articles, how-to's, tech tips and much more
http://freepctech.com
|