Hi everyone, I'd appreciate any help with this bizarre mystery: I have a Toshiba Satellite A350-S6857. For the past week it's been shutting off suddenly, without warning, in an instant. Apparently from reading this has happened to a lot of other Satelitte owners, and I thought the culprit was overheating. But I just went out and bought a fan/cooling platform and, even with it running, it still shorted out again. What worries me is that my computer can't even make it through Windows startup with shutting down, and last time it shut down in the middle of a System Restore, so I'm afraid to try anything again or else my memory will get ****ed up. I'm almost 100% sure it's a hardware problem (but not overheating?). There's a few other complications too... 1) For the past 6-7 months, my battery hasn't held a charge at all. Most of the time it would only hold a charge for 2-3 minutes, but eventually it got to the point where it held no charge at all, and if I accidentally unplugged the AC wire, the comp would instantly turn off. Of course, now it does that even without the wire plugged in.... 2) Because of this, I thought it was the battery making my comp suddenly shut off. My friend suggested I take the battery out and run my computer straight from electricity. I tried it and I thought it worked, but it still suddenly shuts off. 3) This is minor, but I've had my computer for about 2 years, and after the first 2 months or so I started using my -old- AC adapter from my last computer. I think this was because the original AC adapter that came with my computer had a crooked input jack/wire, so I switched over to using my old one. If I remember the voltage was slightly different, but I went ahead and used it anyway until my battery stopped holding a charge. Then I went and bought a new AC adapter but the battery still wouldn't hold a charge. Now my old AC adapter that I had been using won't even power up the computer at all - as in, when I plug it in, the power symbol won't come on. Only the new AC adapter I bought works....but there's that sudden shut-off problem. ---- Anyway, to make matters worse I'm currently studying abroad in Turkey....so that's great timing. My parents are shipping a new battery to me, so I hope that will fix it. But if it's not the battery, and if it's not overheating, what could the problem be? Power unit inside the Satelitte? If I take it to a repair center, could they perform a hardware repair and still manage to save all the data inside my computer? Should I wait until my battery arrives to be safe, try it one more time, and if it still shuts off then take it in, or should I just try to get it repaired ASAP before the battery? Thanks a bunch!
We get similar issues with some machines we supply at work. Try this: Unplug power and battery. Hold on button for a few seconds. Plug in power only. Boot into windows then shut down. Unplug power, plug in battery, plug in power and turn on. It performs some strange reset. May solve your issue.
It may be because the heat sink for the CPU has become unseated and now when the CPU gets too hot its fail-safe it to shut-down. OR because there could be a build up of dusk open her up and give it a dusting (with a can of air) and check the heat sink over the CPU chip.
