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Laptop shuts down unexpectedly

1K views 4 replies 3 participants last post by  ktstone 
#1 ·
I have a Dell Inspiron 5150 running winxp pro. Lately, the laptop has become extremely flaky. If the laptop is moved, jostled, repositioned, bumped, or even if the screen is tilted up or down, the screen will go black and the fan will start humming. It will always try to access the cd drive as well. It will not respond, so I have to manually turn it off.

Here's a couple of things that I know for sure:

It's not a heat issue, unless the sensor is out of whack.
It's not a software issue.
The battery is good.

Any ideas? Thanks so much for your input...
 
#4 ·
I blow the dust out of mine about every other week, we have a clean home, but you would still be amazed at the amount of dust to come out of one. Although turning the machine over shouldn`t have anything to do with dust.....as long as you have the bits open in the bottom to reseat the memory and HDD, might wanna just try to blow some dust out then. Just a thought.
 
#5 ·
I have a very strange update to this problem. Firstly, here's what I've done so far. I've reseated the ram, hard drive, dvd drive, even the cpu. When booting after everything has been reseated, I have the same problem with sudden power down.

Here's the strange part:

If I apply pressure to the palm rest area, the laptop boots up with no problems. Once I let go, it will power down immediately. Not only will it boot up, but if I'm "squeezing" the palm rest area, I can move the laptop around and move the screen up and down slowly or quickly and there are no problems whatsoever. In fact, I haven't been able to reproduce the problem as long as there is pressure on the palm rest.

What could this be? The only components located under the palm rest are the battery and the dvd drive. It doesn't matter if they are removed or not, the pressure technique still applies regardless. I've taken the laptop competely apart and I can find no loose connections to any devices.

Does anyone have any insight or experience with something like this?
 
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