New to Laptops, need help

Blitzkreig75 · January 10th, 2006, 05:38 PM

I have a Micron PC Pentium III 1GHz laptop and it's having some problems. The left mouse button seems to be activating on it's own from time to time. The remaining battery % is always different, (meaning that it will say that I have 1 3/4 hours left, then in a few minutes, it will say I have 2.5 hours left, more than before and this happens while running on battery alone), and occasionally Windows will just completely shut down, (it performs a proper shutdown when this occurs).It only has 128Mb of RAM. Could the small amount of RAM cause these issues?

I must add that when I got the unit, yesterday, I had to remove the heatsink and replace the fan. When I did, the CPU was seized to the HS. I carefully removed the CPU from the HS. The thermal pad had become very hard, and difficult to completely remove from both the HS and CPU. I cleaned both of them off with alcohol and applied AST properly. CPU temps are 32c-39c idle, and up to around 60c full load. According to the spec finder at Intel, the core temp is 100c max, so I think my temps are OK.

Is it normal for the CPU to get hot enough to do that to one of those pads? Is it possible the CPU could be already dammaged from excessive heat?

Blitzkreig75 · January 11th, 2006, 11:59 PM

Anyone? Anything?

LaptopExtreme · January 12th, 2006, 03:08 AM

Yes, it's too hot. What you can do is scrape all the excess residue on the cpu and heatsink. Reapply some thermal grease and hopefully you'll be fine after that. BUT since this is an older P3 chip, it may not have the fail safe features and it may have already screwed up your processor. But you can always try.

[Cerberus] · January 12th, 2006, 03:37 AM

ya, that is a little on the hot side for full load, but then again, i have a pIII that stays in the mid 40s usualy and i don't load it, as it is just a small computer i roam around with using wireless. i have a bigger p4 and max temps do get to the upper 50s when i play games and such, so i wouldn't be to to worried about it damaging anything, but i do belive your shut downs are an overheat protection, that has happend to my friends laptop.

how are you using it, are you proping it up? i usualy keep a ~1/4 inch air gap between the base and the table or desk. also using it on your lap, or a fabric will cause a lot of heat. oh i am not sure of the fan configuration, but if they are on the bottom sucking air in, take some canned air and blow though the intakes, on some of the dells they had a sort of "hoover" fan on bottom that would suck up dust and it would land on the heat sync.

Blitzkreig75 · January 12th, 2006, 05:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LaptopExtreme

Yes, it's too hot. What you can do is scrape all the excess residue on the cpu and heatsink. Reapply some thermal grease and hopefully you'll be fine after that. BUT since this is an older P3 chip, it may not have the fail safe features and it may have already screwed up your processor. But you can always try.

I did the "remove and reapply" thing to GET to 40-60c. Before that it was near 70c! The Arctic brought me down to where I'm at now, (35-40c idle, 55c +/- 5c load). Not a huge difference, but better. The thing was locking up before I applied the AST, (so I THINK it uses thermal throttleing technology).

As far as air flow, I use the little feet on the bottom of the unit when it's on a solid surface, holding the back end off a surface 3/8".

It's still acting strange. The mouse button thing is driving me nuts! It's not dirty, I know because when I had her open I thuroghly checked everything for dust and damage. No visible problems, (other than the thermal pad being petrified).

Is there some Prime95-like software for a laptop environment that I could use to test the CPU for continuity?

LaptopExtreme · January 12th, 2006, 05:54 PM

You can still use Prime95 for a torture test on a laptop. You can also try some of these free tools to diagnose you processor.

Blitzkreig75 · January 12th, 2006, 05:58 PM

Does it sound like my probs are the CPU being overworked?

LaptopExtreme · January 12th, 2006, 06:06 PM

I dont know. Have you set the bios to default settings? Since it's doing an actual shutdown process, something is triggering it. I would check what the heck is triggering it. Do you have any other power management utilities? If it just cut off and turned off, it could be processor telling you that's it's too hot. If it's RAM, it may just lock up and freeze the screen (motherboard too). This is something else.

Blitzkreig75 · January 12th, 2006, 06:29 PM

I have the BIOS, (what of them there is, there's not many options in there), set to default. I did that before I cleaned the CPU ans HS. The system buss is at 100MHz, but the RAM is 133MHz. I know that won't cause a prob in a desktop, but this is a laptop and I just don't know enough to rule ANYTHING out, (that's why I asked 'yall for some help).

The shutting down has only happened a few times. When it did occur, it was a complete shutdown, not a restart. It just happens seemingly at random. I know desktops with this symptom usually have heat-related issues, so I did the AST thing and it hasn't "restarted" since then. However, the mouse prob seems to come and go.

It's the mouse thing that's eating me. Sometimes it is difficult to control. Like today, it, (the moouse), kept going back to the point it was right before I moved it. This happens a lot.

This unit is due to be picked up next week, (it's sold to a client of mine), and it's just not "right".

When running Prime95, what priority shoul I run at? I think priority 10 would be too much. Am I correct?

wera · January 12th, 2006, 07:21 PM

As far as i can read out of this 100 c is to hot *no duh* but the lef mouse click issue could be the toutchpad becase if you tap it twice it counts as a click.