I have a compaq laptop. When I turn it on, everything begins to load regularly. After about 5 minutes it completely turns off- it doesn't shut down, it turns off. The last time this happened, I thought it had something to do with AIM. It was fine last night but this morning it crashed. I haven't changed anything in the startup and have no idea what could be causing this. I went to bestbuy.com and talked with a geek squad person who told me to bring it in, that it was hardware related- and that he couldn't look up my warranty information without my laptop in the store. That sounded kinda weird to me so I wanted to try tww first. I'm not at home right now but will try to work on it more and come back to this thread after school. Any suggestions?

[Edited on May 9, 2007 at 7:54 AM. Reason : .]

5/9/2007 7:53:34 AM

something with the battery prolly

5/9/2007 7:55:22 AM

This happens while plugged into the wall with and without the battery in the computer.

5/9/2007 8:08:48 AM

try holding the power cord in as good as you can and see if it lasts longer than 5 minutes

5/9/2007 8:10:18 AM

seems like something in the power brick is overheating and shutting down, thus cutting power....

could also be a short like dnl mentioned...

5/9/2007 9:23:15 AM

I don't know about your laptop girl but I could turn you on.

5/9/2007 12:50:55 PM

^haha

I've called the geek squad and I think I'm going to take it to them this afternoon. The tech lady at my school says the overheating is probably my hard drive.

5/9/2007 1:14:00 PM

She's probably wrong. Overheating yes, hard drive no.

5/9/2007 1:19:20 PM

^^

Don't take it to the geek squad. Take it to a local shop. You're better off.

5/9/2007 1:23:45 PM

while we're on perverted comments...

Quote :

"I've called the geek squad and I think I'm going to take it to them this afternoon. "

or are the geek squad gonna brint IT to you girl. squad stylez.

5/9/2007 2:18:17 PM

Quote :

"Don't take it to the geek squad. Take it to a local shop. You're better off."

agreed. take it to intrex or something, geek squad overcahrges (by alot)

5/9/2007 2:27:29 PM

Quote :

"Overheating yes, hard drive no."

lol yeah



i second the intrex bit, they will charge you a lot less than geeksquad and are usually more competent (won't autoformat your drive)

5/9/2007 2:35:45 PM

It turns out it was the motherboard. Since I had a service plan (yay!) it's free to have it replaced, but I'm without my computer for 2 weeks. Eeek.

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

5/10/2007 7:35:28 AM

odd. only think i can think of there (other than a constellation of heat issues causing it) would be a capacitor not blown but just fucking up...


that said, I assume they have specialized diagnostic equipment where you can just take the computer apart and plug in the parts that test to see if they are working correctly?

[Edited on May 10, 2007 at 9:42 AM. Reason : s]

5/10/2007 9:41:25 AM