Toshiba laptop, Satellite A135-S4656 shuts off after a while.

Sounds like a fan/dirt/heat sink compound problem. I've found thick gun oil to be good for noisy fan bearings.

nt

from your excellent description it sounds like you need to replace the fan along with cleaning any dust accumulation in the heatsink ... fans go bad f rom wear and there is no way to lubricate them back to being operational ex cept for maybe a short period of time ... try to find an original replaceme nt fan because most of generic replacements are junk and will not last.

I was able to remove the keyboard after lots of nudging with several small screwdrivers. I'm not down to the bare motherboard yet but at first glance, I don't see much dust in this case. A new fan is going to be at least $20. Throw in a couple of hours for labor and testing and this nearly seven year old laptop may not be economical to repair. The part about the erratic behavior of the mouse makes me think that there may be an additional hardware failure other than the heat problem.

Thanks for your reply.

Sounds like a dying fan or it's clogged with dirt. If you're going to tear it apart, you might was well replace the fan. One common problem with this style of fan and associated heat pipe radiator is that dirts, dust, and hair get stuck BETWEEN the fan outlet and the radiator fins. Tring to clean out this dust with compressed air blowing inward or outward doesn't work. The filth gets stuck in place and needs to be mechanically removed with a brush, tweezers, or scraper. Photo: The heat pipe radiator is to the left of the fan. The dirt is probably in between the radiator and the fan.

The dust is inside the fan shroud, in the heat pipe radiator, and jammed in between the fan and radiator. Also around the intake on the bottom of the machine. Hit it with compressed air and watch the dusty fly.

$6 if you don't mine used. $15 for new.

Right. Just toss it because you can't find a way to get rich fixing it. Repair is always better than recycling:

It's caused by either too many mouse drivers installed or a broken "enhanced" pointer precision:

Hi Jeff,

First of all, I value your opinion quite highly. I mentioned the "not economical to repair" part because I wasn't sure the motherboard was stable. I try as hard as anybody to keep things running for as long as possible. Since you said it's more likely the mouse problem is a software issue then the motherboard should be in good shape and it will be economical to repair. I didn't want to go to the trouble and spend my customer's money and time replacing the fan and finding out a few weeks later that the motherboard was not stable.

Thanks for your reply.

Careful. I've been very wrong in the past. Nobody can guess(tm) as much as I do and also have a perfect record. Caveat Emptor.

Good. I'm somewhat of a fanatic on the topic of repair and recycling (in that order).

Repairing a minor problem on a laptop, and then finding a more serious problem is an all too common risk. There was a point in my life when I decided that I would never accept another laptop for repair because of all the mechanical failures (BGA soldering problems mostly). They would leave my shop fixed, but then come back 30 to 180 days later, usually with a dead motherboard. I did my share of BGA solder reflow repairs, but they were generally not worth the time effort. I think my batting average was about 1 success in 5 tries. About 4 years ago, which coincided with a massive "Nvidia recall" epidemic of failed laptops from all them major brands, that I had to provide a written disclaimer over failures specifically covered in the recall. Things are not much better these days, where the soldering of large BGA chips and the mechanical securing of motherboards still seems to be a problem.

I can't offer much advice as to which laptops are worth fixing and which are an invitation to a financial loss. In general, I look for potential high cost damage, such as overheated CPU's, overheating video chips, dead batteries, dying hard disk drives, and intermittent motherboards. A few questions to the owner (flashing display, unexpected shutdowns, failure to boot, sticky keys, loose power jack, etc) are usually sufficient to uncover these potential future failures. If it's too much, stop before it's too late.

There's also the matter of profit. I charge $75/hr for shop time. It takes me at least 1.0 hrs to tear apart a laptop making $75 my minimum charge for fixing nothing. I could probably do the fan for double the cost of the fan plus $75 labor if there was nothing else wrong. The problem is that there's always something else wrong, both in hardware and in software. Dead batteries are the most common. Dying hard disks (use a S.M.A.R.T. util) are a close second. The potential cost could easily approach the cost of a replacement laptop. In the past, I would buy the laptop from the customer, rebuild it, and sell it for a profit. However, with $350 entry level laptops and $200 Chromebooks commonly available, that's no longer an option.

I don't know for sure if it's a software problem. Flaky motherboards have very different symptoms. Hangs, power shutdowns, flickering or weird display, boot failures, dead ports, corrupted data on the HD, and general strangeness in ALL programs, are more typical failing motherboard symptoms. You can look for these yourself, but it's easy enough to ask the customer first.

That's why there's an estimate fee. You check out the machine for a small price. That doesn't eliminate your risk, but certainly does reduce it. However, in my case, I'm stupid and don't charge for estimates. That's because most of the estimates turn into repairs, and the not worth repairing are obvious at first glance.

Incidentally, there's an easy way to tell if the customer is interested in fixing the laptop or is quietly shopping for a replacement. Ask if they want a new or used fan. If used, then they're either cheap, or planning a replacement.