I have a dell latitiude C640 notebook that i bought for school. a couple of weeks agoit over heated and crashed. I reformatted and re-installed windows and it seemed to work ok except that occasionally the center panel on the bottom of it gets really hot and it shuts down and won’t restart until it cools down.
i popped that panel off and it’s where the ram is housed. Is there a separate cooling system for the ram that may have quit on me? Is there anything i can do without have to spend an assload, i mean i’m a poor college student and i cant afford a new laptop or i would. Any ideas?
download the floppy drive image/creator. Run memtest, by booting off of the floppy.
If you have any RED, your memory has errors. Run the test overnight/at least 3 passes.
There is no extra cooling for the RAM in that laptop. Is the laptop dusty inside? You may just need to blow out the heatsink for the processor. Laptop heat issues are common with older laptops like that, especially if there is dust stopping the heat from escaping.
But, its also good to test the RAM as well. It definitely is heat related. Do both
speedswitch XP (google it) run the processor at half speed when its getting warm.
clearing out the dust is easy with a dell, and the fan/heatsink/everythingmassofdellcheapness is allllllways getting clogged…where the power buttons are… take a knife and pry that small panel off, then with a small screw driver there are 3 or 4 screws pull off the keyboard don’t yank… (there is a connector the mobo there) put keyboard in safe place, take out screw under the keyboard remove metal piece. and YAY!! you can see the fan (some dells you can take out the three screws and the fan comes out)… where as others you have to pull the case apart which is simple too
to take case apart take take out 4 screws under where that initial panel was that hold the lcd screen in place, THEN on the back where the usb ports and power cord are there are one per each side take those out and BE FUCKING CAREFUL cause this is a plastic snap area. then with those screws out disconnect monitor from mobo (small connector easy to see, because… wait for it… it comes from the lcd to the mobo). with that off remove the harddrive (two screws hold that in) slide the harddrive out from the machine
take out the battery and the 2 or three under the battery holding the case together (remember there is two more under the where the harddrive was too) then remove the 1241241 screws from the bottom of the computer… in the back where the VGA is takle those hex screws out … (actually might not have to… i think thats when you pull the mobo out, i’m going off memory here) then with all those screws out… gently pry the case apart and then you have access to the fan…
or you can just get me a 6 pack and i’ll do it for you… you just have to come to UB
I’m a Business major… You just have to sit there and be willing to find out what fucks up and search for it… I’m a huge do it yourselfer, and its made me gain lots of computer knowledge landing me an IT job, and the horizons are endless previous experience
