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Tips on How to Salvage Your Overheating Laptop

paul-bush
written by paul bush posted on August 4, 2014

overheating laptopAre you tired of your laptop shutting down on it’s own? Are you losing important data and wasting all your time on a seemingly hopeless and unreliable computer? Well do not lose all hope just yet; here are a few tips that might lessen the problem.

Firstly, it’s important to go over why a laptop overheats in the first place. Laptops are made from chips and hard drives, and these mechanisms use electricity, and therefore generate heat. When your laptop shuts down on its own, it’s a fight or flight response. If the laptop keeps working, it runs the risk of causing permanent damage due to the extreme heat, so instead it solves the problem by shutting down and giving things time to cool down. Your laptop is preventing any major damage from happening. However, by constantly shutting down on its own you may be losing unsaved work and valuable time.

Another way your PC may try to combat the problem of heat, is through the built-in fans that circulate air. Sometimes you can hear these fans working harder than normal, yet the laptop still seems to shut down on its own leading to more frustration. So what gives? Well, it’s likely that the ventilation is being blocked by something, causing the circulated air to circulate nothing but heat, resulting in a shutdown.

Try these tips to prevent your laptop from overheating:

  • Limit laptop usage on a cushion, pillow, blanket, or bag. Always try to use your laptop on a hard surface to promote better circulation
  • Purchase a laptop cooler, they go under the laptop and typically have fans that help cool things down
  • Compressed air may worsen the problem by pushing dust deeper into the laptop. Try a small PC vacuum instead. It will work by sucking the dirt and dust out of the vents

Although these tips may help solve your problem, it may simply be time for an upgrade. When there seems to be no ventilation problem and you’ve done all you can, it is likely that your laptop is overheating because of a small hard drive or little memory. Also a lot of core processor laptops simply cannot handle the amount of activity a user is engaging in. A new laptop with better specs will likely rid you of your problem.

For more information and any inquiries on why your computer is not running like it used to contact our company OneSource Technology. You can reach us at (316) 788-1372 or send us an email at solutions@onesourcetechnology.com.

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