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126577
Vostro 3700 overheating
In the fisrt place, I apologize for my poor english.
Here is the matter : I ordered sixteen months ago on Dell's website a Vostro 3700, which I have used since then for my personnal use as much as for work needs, and which has worked absolutely fine for me one year long. But then it began to shut down after 2-3 seconds of an abrupt black screen when too much used with heavy applicatoins such as games or video creation software. I first suspected overheating, and that's still my guess today.
I soon bought compressed air sprays in an attempt to get the fan unblocked, but saw no dust coming out (indeed I saw later that this was not the cause, since the fan and its grid seem almost perfectly clear). Then I tried with thermal paste. I opened the computer following the instructions on the site (using my service tag) and saw that there was paste over none of the chips, but all around. So I tried to gather it and put itback on the CPU and the GPU. The Vostro began to work fine again form here, for approximately one month. I bought some new paste, removed everybit of the formerly used one, and replaced it (forming a fine layer), which got me a few days.
Then I saw that the paste I had added had undergone the same movement as the prior one, i.e. it hadn't stayed on the chips but had slided around (or what hat staid on the chips had dissolved or whatever). I began to wonder whether it wasn't simply too hot within the computer, so I bought a cooler pad, a seemingly good one with three fans that I placed where the computer heated the most (CPU, GPU/fan, and in a lesser way the hard drive disk). Two months long I sensed my PC heating but not overheating anymore, and yesterday it happened again, two times in a row. I had let the womputer cool between, and had also upgraded my BIOS from version ??1 ton ??10, just in case, and followed the diagnostic at the boot which gave no error.
Here I'm just lost, and don't know what to do any more, so I'm waiting for your advice.
Thanks in advance
P.S : Come to think of it, Windows logs only shows the cores stopping activity when it happens. I don't have heavy applications enough on Linux so no log there.
Nitruk
4 Posts
0
September 28th, 2011 13:00
I finally managed to reproduce to recreate this sorry event under Linux by (very unwillingly) entering a infinite loop in a program of mines. The log simply says that temperature has excedeed the threshold (96°C), hence a global shutdown.
Thanks for answering my thread, by the way.
last2know
6 Posts
0
January 25th, 2012 15:00
I was having the same issues. I fixed this by buying some thermal compound, applying it to the gpu and cpu, first removing the old thermal compound and then cleaning out the fan. My laptop does not overheat anymore. You can find videos on youtube that will explain how to apply thermal compound.
Nitruk
4 Posts
0
January 31st, 2012 13:00
Thanks, but as I said above, I already tried that, amog other things. The situation got better, but temporarily only.
last2know
6 Posts
1
January 31st, 2012 22:00
You actually need to dissamble the laptop and take the fan out completely, then disassemble the fan to clean it properly. That is what I did. I stripped the laptop completely. This absolutely fixed mine 100%. Check these pages and vids out.
http://www.computerrepairtips.net/fix-laptop-overheating-shutdown-problem/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7rPqCvCt0g
and you can also download this free tool which will tell you exactly which part is overheating. But I guarantee if you take the laptop and then fan apart to clean it ti will fix the problem!..
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html
the download link is on the righthand side of that page.
I sincerely hope you try this fix. I really thought my laptop was beyond repair, since I did these things it is as new.
Nitruk
4 Posts
0
February 4th, 2012 03:00
Actually I've disassembled my laptop more than once, to apply thermal paste, and I've also looked into the fan and tried removing dust (which I couldn't see, the dust seeming incredibly clean) by diverse means, including compresed air blasts. Though, I've not opened up to the fan itself to this day, so I shall try what you advise me to do, when I'm in a position do it (time and material). But having seen few dus in any each time I got to see the fan, I doubt for now this is my problem here.
Also, about seeing what part is overheating, as I mentioned above, Linux logs give me the CPU (all 4 physical cores of it), and I see no reasons not to trust them.
Thanks for having shared your experience, I wil give feedback in some months. (I have recently changed the thermal paste, which gives me some time without overheating under reasonable use - I have experienced some unexpected troubles with badly bugged programs of mine. ^^ - and I'm not pushing my laptop too hard this times - no times for games playing or video making - other than the aformentioned, so it's not that much strained and I won't know for sure it's "cured" before some time.)
Raffi123
2 Posts
1
July 2nd, 2012 12:00
I have the same problem, It is the first time I have this problem (overheating) with a laptop. Not normal.
La-La-65
2 Posts
0
February 10th, 2014 04:00
I am having the same issue, guys. (I was worried the gap beneath my desk and the vents was not big enough - this big fella gets hot and bothered a lot!)
But I didn't get the shutdown issue till I let my son use it for Minecraft last night. (Good reason why I shouldn't! Sorry, Son ;)
Mine is still under warrantee so I am getting Dell or the original shop to sort this out.
Seems ridiculous that Dell are using a compound that creates this issue??? But thanks for the steer. Will help speed up the fix.
last2know
6 Posts
0
February 10th, 2014 15:00
People.... THIS ^^^^^^^^ IS THE ANSWER FOR FIXING THIS ISSUE!!!
I have successfully fixed half a dozen Vostro 3700 laptops with this problem by following the above steps.. I work in IT.
rmjohnson144
17 Posts
0
January 3rd, 2018 22:00
I have a similar issue, expect my fans keep slowing down and speeding up. They fluctuate up and down constantly. But the temps keep rising and then it just suddenly turns off without any warning of any kind.
I assume it hit the max temp. But why don't my fans stay on and get louder as it gets hotter like normal fans.?
The fans aren't noisy, other than fan speeds. No squeaks or whines.
I have the latest A12 BIOS from 2014.
I thought it was my CPU failing, but it acts more like fan issues. Either failing or improper calibration.
I installed a spare SSD I had with a trial win10 install. It seems better, but I noticed it uses only the Intel GPU and doesn't install the nvidia GT-330m at all. Probably why it takes longer to overheat.
How can I tell if my fan is bad/failing, or if it's my CPU dying from degradation. or just both of them at the same time, maybe including the GT-330m as well.
rmjohnson144
17 Posts
0
January 4th, 2018 01:00
I played around a little more.
I start off with it fluctuating fan speeds in the 50s then it drops down to low 40s. I play Microsoft Mahjongg to see how it goes, then it slowly rises to 60s and then fan hits constant high speed and temps drop to 40s and slowly rise with fan on steady. Then it started getting high 60s and a few seconds later the fan shut off. Then I continued playing my game and then a quite a few seconds later it suddenly shuts off.
Not sure why the fan shut off at high 60s. But it's repeatable. I have to let it cool down for an hour or so.
I can also hear all kinds of sporadic coil whine beeps. It sounds like it's my RAM chips I think. I thought it was the hard drive at first, but then I realized I installed an SSD. lol
This is really baffling. No fan settings in BIOS at all. No win10 software either. Maybe I'll try the win7 drive again tomorrow. I cloned it for safety to another spare drive.