I've had my laptop for nearly a year now, but for the past month or so it's been getting slower and slower, at one time I could run Fallout 3 on ultra high settings, now I doubt I could run it on low. I reformated last night, although the laptop kept turning itself off during the process. I'm now reinstalling important programs and stuff, but the laptop is still turning itself off every 45 minutes or so, and still running fairly slowly. I'm guessing, then, that it's a hardware issue, but in a year old laptop that, although heavily used, has never really been damaged, it seems pretty weird. Anyone have any tips? It's an Acer Aspire 5740G, by the way. Also, the resolution is stuck at 1024x768, with no option to change it to the native resolution of 1366x768. I've tried reinstalling the ATI catalyst control centre, which IIRC had some resolution settings in, but the laptop's turned itself off both times I've tried to install it. By the way, when I say turned itself off I don't mean it shuts down, it literally just turns off.

It sounds like it's overheating. My laptop does the same thing, over time it fills up with dust and the coolant gel dries up, so it reaches higher temperatures. Turning itself off is a way for it to avoid melting it's innards.


I bought an external fan,it stops the shutting off, although you could reapply some new coolant gel if you are willing to open it up.


Either way, you probably aren't going to get it to run games as well as it used to.

Yeah, it did seem to be getting hotter than usual, and when I opened my window last night it lasted a bit longer. Is http://www.amazon.co.uk/Belkin-Laptop-Cooling-Capacity-F5L001er/dp/B000W0D15O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303823528&sr=8-1 the kind of fan you meant?

The exact one, actually. :tongue:

Yes, some nights I create a funnel of air, and my computer is cooled by the wind that blows down from the Pennines.

Just went out and bought that one from Currys, my laptop's really wide so it slides about a bit, I'll blu-tac it on or something. I don't know where the wind in Middlesbrough is from, somewhere equally grim, no doubt.

It's probably clogged with dust. Get some canned air and try and clear the fans/vents.

If you had trouble re-installing / upgrading Catalyst control center, it sounds like you need to use a http://www.drivercleaner.net/type program to completely get rid of the old version before upgrading.

Have you tried calling Acer tech support? is it still under warranty? maybe your GPU is seriously defective and needs to be replaced.

If you suspect dirt or dust is the culprit, you can open up your laptop to check the motherboard. Any "dirty" areas can be cleaned with compressed air (make sure to hold it upside down at an angle so the dust falls out) or even worst case scenario with a q-tip dipped in 99% Isopropyl alchohol and then air dried. I have no technical repair skills whatsoever, but from following a couple of YouTube videos, I once successfully repaired a laptop that got damaged from liquid spillage.

Also, in general, you will likely find vastly improved performance on your laptop by upgrading RAM to 4GB or more and/or upgrading your hard drive to SSD. If your laptop is dual/quad core and you have not already done so, you will also see huge benefit from upgrading to Win7 64-bit.




Umm... I don't even want to know how you are creating a funnel of air from your Pennines :shrug: