power problems with Toshiba Satellite A205-S5855, randomly shuts off

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elmer91

Member
About a week ago my laptop starting randomly shutting off. at first i didnt think anything of it, but the last few days it has gotten really bad. i am not doing anything that could cause it, it has good airflow, it is fairly level, and i am not beating on it or anything. it shuts off sometimes when i set it down, when i am typing. one time it shut off when my wrist was barely resting on the left side under the keyboard. any ideas on what the problem is?
 
That sounds like you have a bad connection or short internally, either to the power systems or to a component (RAM, CPU, etc...).
 
Zatharus said:
That sounds like you have a bad connection or short internally, either to the power systems or to a component (RAM, CPU, etc...).
Click to expand...

ok. i checked to power supply, the battery, and everything seemed fine. is this something i should send in for the warranty? (im not to good with computers, joined this forum to get help)
 
Yeah, call warranty services. You most likely have a hardware problem if it is just powering off abruptly.

In the mean time, grab SpeedFan and run Prime95 on it. Monitor the laptop for sudden spikes in temperature. It could be a thermal shutdown, too.
 
got them both now. but no idea what i am doing with them. speedfan says core 0 is at :48, and core 1 is at 1:48
 
That's normal. Watch those number while running a long session of Prime95. See if they spike right before a shutdown or just note what the highest numbers you see are.
 
what do i need to have everything set on to run prime95?

and what numbers would be considered a high temp number?
 
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Just launch both programs. In Prime95, go to the options menu and choose "Torture Test" and then the second option, In-place large FFTs.
 
thanks for the help. i will run that tomorrow when i have the time to. and what numbers should i be looking for when the temp gets high?
 
My pleasure! :)

Too high for this model is going to be in the 70's plus I believe. The main thing to watch for though is a sudden spike temperature or a constantly rising temperature and then crash.
 
i am starting to think it is a short somewhere. the highest number i have seen with normal usage is 52, and i was experimenting, seeing if there was a certain spot that would trigger the shutdown, and it does it all around at random times. the average number i am seeing is 47-48
 
That is quite possible. I had that happen to some of my machines in the past. Either a short or a loose CPU (happened on one of my old machines).
 
my brother mentioned that it could be a faulty temp. sensor. he said that the laptops at his school were doing the same thing, and that was the problem.
 
elmer91 said:
my brother mentioned that it could be a faulty temp. sensor. he said that the laptops at his school were doing the same thing, and that was the problem.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's what I was getting at when I was suggesting to look for sudden spikes in the temp. I have had this happen before on desktops where the motherboard's sensor freaks out and causes a thermal shutdown without legitimate cause.
 
I am having the same issue, as is another person on another forum. The A205-57464 has recently started shutting off. My wife, who now has lost faith in my ability to purchase her a decent laptop will be working on something and the Toshiba will just shut off, sometimes 3-4 times a day. For a while I blamed Vista, but being an Electrical Engineer, I can see this is a bigger problem. It is frustrating because I paid an additional $400 to get what I thought was a "better" model.

According to this other forum, the issue is the Mother Board and it will run approx. $500.
Yikes. That is not what I signed up for with Toshiba.
 
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