my pc sounds like its gonna fly off - i just cleaned out tower as i always do every couple months and when i restarted this time it seem to overheat - the fans max out over the littlest applications - one thing that i noticed is that the "goo" between the cpu housing and the heat sink is dry - i plan on adding some arctic ice a.s.a.p but can something so small create this prob - or do i have other issues i need to look into?
View 4 RepliesBasically the machine just switches itself off, frequently and without warning. There is no obvious pattern to when this happens. It's happened whilst booting up, after a few minutes. a few hours and occassionally doesn't happen at all. Tech support appear certain that it is either due to the cpu/motherboard overheating or a problem with the operating system. I've checked the temperatures on rebooting after it's shutdown and these have never exceeded 53 and 37 degrees (CPU and M/B respectively). Tech support seemed confident that this pointed to a problem with Vista.
I tried running the the machine in safe mode and it still shut itself down (although it did seem to be slightly more stable). In addition to shutting down unexpectedly the machine was prone to freezing with almost all software 'not responding' (including Task Manager which was a new one on me ). On the occassions when I could get task manager to work with the machine frozen it indicated that almost none of the system resources were being used (CPU usage about 5% and memory in the low 20% area).
Having concluded that a reinstallation was required I did a clean install using Brink's very helpful tutorial. At first the machine seemed stable after the installation however a couple of days later it began to shut down again. Other than that problem the operating system seems to be stable (so partial success). I've disabled all the obvious sleep options in the control panel so I don't think it's anything to do with that.
My Gateway LX6810-01 has a plethora of issues which has lead to my decision to replace it. Since my new machine won't arrive for a few weeks, I'm stuck using this one till it does. I've had issues with overheating and the machine shuts down, in as little as 5-10 minutes of doing anything more graphically challenging than checking my email or writing this post.
I want to disable the auto shutdown feature so I can actually watch an entire movie, or perhaps even play a game. Since I dont really care about damaging the machine with a new one on the way, I just need the most effective way to do this. I've searched through my BIOS settings and haven't found anything relating to overheating, or temperatures. If someone knows of maybe a hidden, or "locked" BIOS feature, or one I'm missing, or even a solution with software, or in Vista, that would be great.Again, just wanted to say I'm not worried about damage to the machine, I just need it to stop shutting down on me when it gets alittle warm.