Laptop powers off after 20 min - Worth getting?

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Hi guys, I stopped at a garage sale near my house this morning. The person there is selling a HP Pavillion Entertainment PC (I think it's a dv6) that will run fine and after about 20 min it will just power off as if it was running on low battery and died. However, it is plugged in and doing this.. battery isn't charging, but that shouldn't matter. Before it shuts down the fans speed up and it seems pretty hot on the bottom.. I wonder if it's an overheating issue? The person who is selling it says that it has to do with a recall from hp that they were to late to get it in to fix??? Anyway, I was wondering if you thought it was worth picking up? They are asking $10. I guess it might be worth it just for the 2 GB of RAM and the 220 GB HDD.. if nothing else!

Thoughts?
 
It will worth your while if you know how to fix it.

For parts: 10bux for the power adapter and 220GB 3.5" HDD is fine.

I personally would only get it for parts.

Q.
 
Dv6's are infamous for this
Its probably overheating, but also probably damaged the motherboard.

If you want to have a beater laptop, for the price I'd buy it.
Get some AS5, take it apart, clean it well. Wash the cooler. Replace the [censored] thermal pads with real AS5 thermal paste. And see what happens
 
Yea for parts is what I'm thinking right now. For $10 I really can't go wrong. The laptop itself it very clean and hardly looks used.. it cost $800 new.

Thanks for your reply!
 
If it's repeatedly done this, the internals are likely cooked!

Had the same problem with a Dell Inspiron 5150 that constantly overheated.
 
Originally Posted By: michaelluscher
Dv6's are infamous for this
Its probably overheating, but also probably damaged the motherboard.

If you want to have a beater laptop, for the price I'd buy it.
Get some AS5, take it apart, clean it well. Wash the cooler. Replace the [censored] thermal pads with real AS5 thermal paste. And see what happens

Yea I think I am going to go back over there and grab it.. if I get it working great, if not I can use the good parts.
 
Originally Posted By: Drew99GT
If it's repeatedly done this, the internals are likely cooked!

Had the same problem with a Dell Inspiron 5150 that constantly overheated.

They really haven't used it much because of that, so I'm not sure how much it's done that. Do you think the HDD and RAM would be ok?
 
Originally Posted By: Drew99GT
On mine, it was the motherboard that cracked from heat. the RAM was fine. Can't comment on the HDD since I had already replaced it.

Thanks!
 
the cpu coolers finns are probably plugged in with dust and it shots down from overheating. I fixed a couple of laptops with this problem by cleaning them.
 
Yep, I'd grab it for $10 without question. My wife had a dv4 that did the same thing. I took the ram and hdd out of it for parts.
 
if nothing else its kinda cool to take something apart and not worry about breaking it.. incase you have to do it to a good one later.

hdd or memory alone is worth 10$
 
Originally Posted By: michaelluscher
Dv6's are infamous for this
Its probably overheating, but also probably damaged the motherboard.

If you want to have a beater laptop, for the price I'd buy it.
Get some AS5, take it apart, clean it well. Wash the cooler. Replace the [censored] thermal pads with real AS5 thermal paste. And see what happens
+1 on the thermal compound on the CPU heatsink.
Take these puppies apart by the dozens every week.
 
Originally Posted By: Rand
if nothing else its kinda cool to take something apart and not worry about breaking it.. incase you have to do it to a good one later.

hdd or memory alone is worth 10$

+1 Exactly. The HDD is actually a Western digital 250 GB. Now I have a desktop tower and laptop to take apart and not worry about. If it works when I get it back together again that is even better!
 
Put a laptop cooler underneath.

$20 or so, a plastic tray with fans that blow air into the laptop.

Get one that's wall powered, not USB, if you can. Not sure their made any more...
 
I have a HP Compaq 6910P laptop that would shut off, I thought it was a virus/overheating. it turned out the laptop jack charging port was warped on the motherboard. any movement of the laptop, it would shut off automatically.
 
^^ That's usually from a cracked solder point from the power socket to the motherboard. It's a fairly easy thing to fix.

That said if the laptop is an old enough generation DV6 you might be able to get a motherboard for it on the cheap as well.

The motherboard for my old v2000 (predecessor to the DV series) a few years ago was $37, and it's still happily chugging along now with lubuntu on it.
 
So.. finally got some free time and took this laptop apart... took me 1.5 hours just to get it open.. HP had the thing screwed together with what must have been like 100 screws! Some of them were in such hard to get to places that you almost had to break the laptop just to get to them. Not a fan of HP.

Anyway, once I got the thing open I cleaned the old thermal paste off (really dry and not covering much of the CPU) I put Arctic Silver 5 on there. Closed the thing and turned it on... Fan still running really high right off the bat. after about 20 min it died.

...So any other ideas? It was really clean inside so that isn't an issue. I'm thinking it is a malfunctioning part as HP told the previous owner. In that case I'm not sure its worth getting it going. I already got my $10 out of it using some of the RAM and experience playing around with it!
 
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