HP Pavilion dv6-1216sa - Overheats then goes off

[fazmac]

This laptop is just about a year old and it's started misbehaving. After being on for less than an hour, the top left part of the keyboard area gets really hot then the comp just goes off. What is going on??

The product page is as follows (I haven't changed any hardware).

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01790163&tmp_task=prodinfoCategory&lc=en&dlc=en...

[Knute]

Get yourself a thing of canned air and blow out the fan.  Your processor is overheating.  Also check that the fan is on and working, the next step would be to re-seat the processor and put on a fresh coat of thermal grease, a bit more advanced than the previous solutions, so if those do not work check your warranty status prior to cracking open the laptop.

[fazmac]

The fan works. The warranty is over so even if I open it up, I want be voiding it. Although I want to avoid opening it up unless I have to. I assumed it was the processor heating up, I've heard AMD processors tend to do that.

I'll start with the first solution.

Do I need to open up the laptop to use the compressed air?

[Knute]

No, you should be able to blow it out without cracking it open, however if it is a heavy duty amount of dirt in there you'll need to open it.  Sometimes the only way to figure that out is to open it.  What actually happens is that the fan sucks in air to cool the processor, but it also sucks up dust, dirt, hair, etc. all that stuff gets sucked from the bottom and blown out the side, but there is a heat sink there and that tends to trap debris that the fan sucked in.  Over time it can layer up to a nasty level and that may just be what you have.  If anything you'll need to remove the keyboard, and then the fan to visually ensure that there is no dirt in the heat sink.  However once you are at that level, the processor is right there and with the removal of a few more screws the processor can be reseated and re-greased.

[fazmac]

Thanks. I'll go buy myself some air and hope I don't have to open it up. Luckily that will be enough.

By the way, will a laptop cooler help out or is that just a waste of money?

[Knute]

I would imagine that depends on the cooler, anything that is going to effectively keep the temperature cool in the laptop will help.

[smonet]

Another option to the compressed/canned air, is to use a vacuum.

Use it on the air inlets for your laptop, and what you are doing is reversing the normal airflow though the cooling system.

By reversing the flow, dust and mung that has flown in one direction and hung up on things like cooling fins, will now be pulled in the opposite direction and removed.

[fazmac]

But I thought using a vacuum on comps is not advsiable since it will mess with the circuits. Something about static electricity?