Unusual shutdown at random interval

[gabe22]

Hi

My laptop Dell Studio XPS L502 i7 with following config:

Windows 7 Home Premium 64b (WEI Rating: 5.7)
Ram 8GB
Nvidia GeForce GT 540M
WD HDD 500GB
WD Portable 1TB


The issue is:
It shutsdown no error or anything, it just turns off, like for instance ... I'm doing something .. playing a game or watching something .. suddenly screen goes black and in 1/2sec .. it turns off.

Although after a few times I noticed this happens mostly when I play "Dota 2", personally with this laptops config I doubt that my system is unable to run the game and it did .. for years .. but recently this issue started.
And after one of this auto turn offs .. when starting laptop again .. I noticed something like "battery needs to be replaced .. " or similar message .. sorry I can't remember the exacty words.

Then I ran the battery life test using dell tools that came along with laptop, it shows battery at 49% ..

I'm wondering if this is actually battery related issue or something else?

Any help is much appreciated, thanks
(PS: I ran full system scan with avast latest, supertin anti-malware, malware bytes ... nothing detected)

 

[Daphne]

the same problem happened on my computer!! Whenever I start it for a while, it will shutdown suddenly. Luckily, I got it fixed by reinstall the operating system, now it works fine.

 

[ShoTTaS]

Hi Gabe,

Firstly, open your computer without the battery, just the power supply plugged in. Observe if the shutting down issue still occurs.

Regards.

 

[gabe22]

By without battery do you mean to remove it from the laptop? or disable using some software or something ... ?

 

[ShoTTaS]

yeah, remove it from the laptop. but some laptop nowadays come with an internal battery which you cannot remove unless you open the case. i hope your laptop is not one of it.

 

[oscer1]

when was the last time you cleaned out the vents and fan area of the laptop? could be that it's over heating and shutting down.

 

[gabe22]

on a 2nd note .... perhaps you're right, i never cleaned it and its been i'm gonna clean tomorrow and post back results.

 

[oscer1]

Ok keep us posted

 

[gabe22]

I cleaned up the vents etc .. and its still overheating and ... it causes freezes at random temperature ... screenshot attached with red marks(red marks=freeze)

This freezes last like 1sec but its quite annoying as it happens randomly but within every min or two.
Anyideas?

And CPU heat seems to be stay around 50-59 .. but motherboard it pretty stays above 65

Also I created a speccy snapshot taken right after freeze(in case it helps), here is the url: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/acXc44unnfux72WRJ3nRGAl

 

[gabe22]

This is rather strange .... I did some extensive research and found this article ... dell xps l502x freezes making buzzz sound while playing audio or video file - Laptop Audio Forum - Laptop - Dell Community

It seems those 2 software are the culprit, after uninstalling them this freeze issue stopped for now, I'll keep it under observation for next 24hours and see how it goes.

Now that one issue is probably resolved, anyone have an idea as to how can I keep my systems temperature down? Its quite jumpy ... even when using vlc player with 480p video .. and pretty much nothing else running .. CPU temp stays at around 59-75 C ...and motherboard about 65-90 C.
Any idea on keeping the temp under control .. atleast when not running games etc that requires high CPU/GPU process?

 

[oscer1]

How old is this laptop? Maybe renewing the thermo paste will help

 

[gabe22]

Its about 3 years I think ...

 

[gabe22]

Any idea what could be causing the auto instant shutdowns?

 

[oscer1]

well could still be a heat problem. does it do the same thing when running on just battery? try brunning it with the battery removed from laptop.

 

[gabe22]

I tried that .. system seems to stay overheated with or w/o battery. Someone suggested it could be a motherboard issue? could it?

 

[oscer1]

It possible you feel comfortable taking laptop apart to clean and reapply thermo paste

 

[gabe22]

ok I'll try that

 

[gabe22]

I know its an old thread but the question is related to this one .. so I'm gonna ask here ... I was having random auto-shutdown issue with my dell laptop and it seems according to this article ... dell xps l502x freezes making buzzz sound while playing audio or video file - Laptop Audio - Laptop - Dell Community couple of dell software updates caused this issue and after removing them it was working fine but one of those software's are "My Dell" ... it can be used to monitor battery health, HDD,processor performance etc .. its quite helpful and I just noticed it was removed along with those updates.

Anyone know where do l get a previous version of this software? (like maybe 4/5 months back or perhaps years old version is fine .. as I only use it for checking purposes.