Troubleshooting Laptop Instabilities - System Instabilities, Continued
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In general, notebooks are more affected by inadequate cooling than desktop personal computers. Their components are enclosed in an area with less space, where even a tiny amount of dust can block or sabotage the necessary airflow. Ultimately, this is akin to a low performing cooling system, hence your laptop might overheat.
How do you remove dust? Cloth isn’t advised because it may leave some traces of lint or something, and it’s not ESD-safe (electrostatic discharge). You can use compressed air to wipe away all of the dust. Isopropyl alcohol (95%+ or 99%) is recommended because it evaporates fast. Vodka also works, but it dries more slowly.
After you have cleaned the insides of your notebook entirely, then you should move on to reassembling it. Follow your pointers and notes that you made when you disassembled. Without them, you could be lost. This is no joke at all, especially if you don’t have experience working on laptops.
Hopefully your laptop boots up without problems and you can re-test again with the aforementioned Orthos Prime stress tester to see how it behaves on 100% load. In an ideal case, it should not overheat anymore. This means you have successfully fixed this hardware problem. If it still overheats, then recheck your coolers! Are all of them able to spin without restrictions on full throttle? Is the heat sink seated properly on your processor? Did you apply a thicker layer of thermal paste?
Keep in mind that overall system instability can also be caused by a low performing PSU (Power Supply Unit). Chances of this are low, however, because you don’t upgrade a laptop as frequently as a desktop system and therefore, the power consumption of a notebook computer should not increase over time. Laptops use a different approach for PSUs than desktop computers.
But this certainly does not exclude the fact that it is possible. The laptop has an integrated circuitry that generates the required voltages (3.3V, 5V, vCore, etc.) from the input - 16-24V (which comes from the batteries). Due to extended usage and perhaps inappropriate conditions (air humidity, temperatures, dust, etc.), the components can become defective and degrade the overall efficiency of this circuitry.
All in all, PSU-related system instabilities are not so frequent, unless you're upgrading to a higher-end video card, for example. In these cases, certified technical support is recommended from the particular computer shop that does the upgrade or sells the components. Your notebook might not even be compatible with the component.
Diagnosing a faulty or soon-to-be-defective HDD is quite easy. A dying hard disk drive tends to “give out” the usual symptoms, such as funny noises, a struggling motor that tries to spin, random movements of the read/write heads, and basically noises that shouldn’t be present. If you can locate the source of these unusual sounds (clicks), then back up your data as soon as possible and get a replacement HDD.
Another frustrating hardware issue is when the accu-point or touch-pad acts bizarrely or does not work at all. Let’s face it, having an external USB mouse always attached to a laptop is not comfortable. To troubleshoot this problem, we begin with disassembling the laptop (again, if required) and closely analyzing the connections. You cannot miss these flat ribbon cables. They are underneath the device.
There, you are also going to find the keyboard connectors. Recheck those too. Interestingly enough, often there’s problem with the touch-pad or accu-point cables and not the ones for the keyboard. As soon as you’ve re-plugged everything in, then just assemble the laptop again, not forgetting to be attentive to the clips, screws, etc.
Last but definitely not least, if you are struggling to get your laptop online because its wireless device does not seem to be working, then you should check its antenna connectors. If the device is integrated, then chances are it’s beneath the touchpad or some place near there. Usually, it has two or more antenna connectors (main, aux, etc.). This does not require further explanation. Look for the markings on the wireless PCB (printed circuit board) and search for the correct places for the connectors.
Summing this up, your hardware instability might be caused by other problems too, but hopefully the tips presented in this article were useful enough to help you diagnose and fix your problems. Nonetheless, at least you have learned something and you know what to look for in the future. But since these are some of the most common hardware failures, chances are that you have repaired your notebook by now.
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