Careers & Work
we had a period where our newish laptop suddenly started shutting down for no apparent reason. we did freak out a bit! we got on the web trying to see if we could fix this behaviour. long story short - when we were using our laptop seating it on our legs, our legs or trousers would block the fan vent underneath the laptop thus causing it to overheat and shut down instantaneously. we glued some foam strips under the laptop either side of the fan vent, and have never had this happen again.
Sort by:
Best
Open comment sort options
Best
Top
New
Controversial
Old
Q&A
This post has been marked as safe. Upvoting/downvoting this comment will have no effect.
Hello and welcome to r/LifeProTips!
Please help us decide if this post is a good fit for the subreddit by upvoting or downvoting this comment.
If you think that this is great advice to improve your life, please upvote. If you think this doesn't help you in any way, please downvote. If you don't care, leave it for the others to decide.
This tip also applies to desktop computers that might be tucked into a corner, sitting on carpet, under a desk etc. restricting airflow to the CPU/GPU etc. Clean cool airflow is your friend.
And desktops require internal dust and animal hair removal.
So do laptops. I've opened a few that were hiding a Wookie.
Definitely. I bought a desk quite a few years ago and the spot they included for the desktop had a door on the front and half of the back covered. I tried it for a day and my temps doubled. Never close in a PC.
A tip I learned way back. When putting a computer on the floor, put a phone book or something underneath it to raise it up a bit. When they are directly on the floor, they pick up so much more dust and hair. By raising it up a bit, you reduce this greatly.
Edit: Spelling.
Can buy a piece of kitchen tile for cheap and set it on the carpet for the pc case to sit on. I have also done this to put space heaters on carpet.
I too have heard that ceramic tiles are the best friends of PCs with tempered glass panels.
To the random person who finds this post in 5 years and OPs solution isn't working, most laptops have magnets near the track pad to indicate when the laptop has been closed to turn off the display. So if you put down something like a gaming controller in just the right spot, your screen will go black.
I had a magnetic watch band that would do the same thing! Took me an embarrassingly long time to discover that was what was happening lol
Same!
Came here to say that this is a usual cause for laptops shutting down/sleeping. I buy and repair laptops, so there are times when I have a bunch of them piled up. I would have a hard time whenever I try to turn on the laptop that is on the top of the stack, or if I turn it on somewhere else then place it on the top of the stack, it would immediately shutdown/sleep.
First thing I do on every laptop I own is turn off the option that makes Windows go to sleep when you close the lid.
The next things I do are turn off EVERYTHING that's capable of waking the laptop - which nowadays includes scheduled tasks that can wake the computer from sleep to apply Windows Update in the middle of the night. Imagine that happening while it's in a closed laptop bag.
The only thing that can wake my laptop from sleep is the power button. Not wiggling the mouse, typing on the keyboard, pressing the touchpad, no automated / scheduled tasks and not even Wake on LAN.
I was coming to say this. Magnetic jewelry will cause your laptop to go to sleep when you move it too close to the lid magnets at the bottom of the keyboard. Took a while to figure that one out the first time one of my users came to me with random shutdown issues!
My MacBook screen keeps going dark and wouldn’t wake up when I move the mouse or type on the keyboard. If I connect an external display, that works just fine. The only way to get the screen back up is to restart the laptop. Any ideas on how to wake the screen back up without having to restart?
After you restart, when does the screen go dark again? Does it occur after you've connected an external display and then disconnected?
The screen stays on after I restart. Sometimes it happens when I connect an external display but it also happens without an external display connected
It happens randomly. Mostly when an external display is connected
If it's completely random, it could just be a loose internal ribbon cable. See if adjusting the screen's angle can bring the display back on. If that doesn't change anything, you may be inadvertently connecting to a wireless display with only one desktop showing. If it's not that, try doing a malware scan.
Also never play your laptop on soft surfaces like a bed or sofa. Put it on something solid like a book so its feet can provide the necessary clearance for airflow to happen.
This is also somewhat true for passively cooled devices and their charging bricks.
Don't put them on heat insulating materials like blankets or soft cushions, it'll degrade them over time and can can become a fire hazard.
Slightly NSFW, but Google toasted leg syndrome. Manufactures specifically moved away from calling them laptops to calling them notebooks. For me growing up they were labtops like for a lab environment, but that could just be my mild dyslexic self. 20+ years in I.T. they are notebooks and I’ll die on that hill, if someone argues I’ll legit have them search toasted leg syndrome and they’re always wtf mate?
'toasted leg syndrome' - brilliant and true!
I have wondered if someone did a study on the correlation of sperm quality and laptop usage (keeping the laptop on your lap).
Notebook, madlad.
LPT: 3-4 years is how long the thermal paste between your CPU and fan/heatsink lasts.
You can dust to your hearts desire, but your PC/laptop will still have heat issues if you don't replace this.
No need to replace it unless removing dust doesn’t work. Old thermal paste on 20+ year old game consoles still works just fine but you can generally improve temps by a few degrees by replacing it.
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, you’re way more likely to break something by replacing the thermal paste than fix an issue by replacing thermal paste.
For hard to open games consoles, etc. I agree. But changing thermal paste on PCs or laptops is pretty easy IMO
I’m not saying it’s hard but that it’s unnecessary in the vast majority of cases and disassembling electronics to repaste is more risky than not doing it.
Eh, I still disagree. Thermal cycling will also damage your electronics. Average use will put your CPU through greater temperature fluctuation extremes, warping contacts and eventually leading to the early death of the device via open connections. This is a common cause of death for older, well used consoles. Completely avoidable for PCs and laptops.
(Source: part of my job is helping design cooling systems for electronics)
Place a hard surface under all computers you need air flow. Kittys like computer warmth so keep your vents clean of hair.
My Asus has been doing this since it was new. Didn’t have this problem with HP, Dell, or Samsung laptops.
Making sure the latest driver updates are installed is also helpful.
Comment deleted by user
Don’t vacuum electronics.
And don't use a compressor, get an air can. Unless you can put a max pressure on the compressor.
In other words, this dude has shit LPT's
i’ve always used a the cooling feature on a hairdryer on its lowest power setting, am i damaging the insides with this?
Unlikely except you may be pushing dust in further. If you don't want to open it, it may be better to use a strong shop-vac or similar to suck the dust OUT. I would recommend opening the back of the laptop though. It usually pretty easy and done with a basic small screwdriver.
LPT: don't damage your electronics by doing this.
Yes. It's like 6-8 small screws to open the bottom of most laptops and you get instant access to the cooler usually. You idea is an amazingly bad one.
yeah cleaning the fan inside the laptop case is a good tip. when we replaced a broken hinge we found the fan was full of dust in its internal vent. cleaning out the dust made the fan run silently, so it had a significant effect. undoing the screws on the back is not difficult with the right screwdriver.
Worst tech advice I've seen here in a hit minute
This tip has a lot of caveats. Not using an anti static vacuum or spinning the fans with the compressed air will permanently damage the computer.
Comment deleted by user
Ideally you want to hold down the fans in place. Even a tiny bit of spinning can be damaging.
I keep my laptop on top of a cooling pad when I use it. It's one of those USB ones with extra fans for ventilation. I've used it plugged in maybe like twice though. It works almost as well just having the laptop on top of it because of all of the extra empty space for air flow.
I've had a laptop like this, my solution was an old binder (or something like that) that I used as a "lap table" whenever I needed my laptop to not be on a table. In a pinch, a plastic folded seemed to work too. Figured I'd share in case someone has one where there isn't a lot of room to glue foam feet onto
When I started homeschooling my son due to the pandemic, I bought a little metal mesh “tray” that’s meant for laptops to be placed on top of and also it has a kickstand at the back so you could also angle it/stand it up. The “mesh” is on the bottom to allow airflow. It was like $15. We use it all the time.
funny i was thinking of building something like that. but settled on a quick and easy - glue some foam to the bottom of the laptop.
Can someone explain why computer companies dont do something to avoid this? If it's as easier as slightly raising the computer around the fan, why haven't they designed them to be lap compatible?
we are surprised that we opened a can of worms with our post. there is obviously a wider issue here that we didnt realise. have no idea how to raise this issue with manufacturers? thnx for your comment.
"For no apparent reason" The most common reason for a unexpected shut-down is overheating. And the most common reason a laptop overheats is because noobs put it on their lap and block the vents. Just a box or any hard-ish flat surface to place under the laptop. A panel of a thick cardboard box would do it or a cutting board.
Overheating is not an "no apparent reason". It is very obvious, as the poor machine is burning on your legs, and probably trying to cool down by running the fan on 150%.
I was hoping I’d click this post and it would just say:
“Throw it against a fucking wall.”
Introducing LPT REQUEST FRIDAYS
We determine "Friday" as beginning at 12am Eastern Time (EST: UTC/GMT -5, EDT: UTC/GMT -4)
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
TIL computers need cooling 🤦♂️
Nothing inexplicable about stupidity.
Fill your computer with ice
You should be able to use a laptop on top of your lap
Depends on what you're asking it to do. Light web browsing, yeah totally. Playing baldur's gate 3? Let the guy breaaaatheee!
My old laptop was always running hot, especially in summer. I was chatting with a former client many years ago when he noticed I was using a notebook to keep the hot laptop off my legs. He suggested installing Throttlestop to throttle the CPU and GPU to run at lower speeds. He said that normal users didn't need the max computing & graphics processing power for most tasks, so it was better to throttle them to keep temps down.
After installing Throttlestop and adjusting the settings, it dramatically cooled off my laptop. I didn't hear the fan running much anymore because it didn't need to cool off an overheated CPU & GPU.
Ever since, I've installed Throttlestop to every other laptop that I've used.
This doesn’t work on all laptops as some vendors (cough cough Dell cough cough) lock you out of undervolting, fan curves, and overclocking with no way to change it, even in the BIOS.
It sucks that some computers don't allow it. My work laptop is a Dell, and Throttlestop works perfectly fine on it. As soon as I hear the fan spinning loudly, I know that Thottlestop isn't on yet, and the fan quiets down immediately after I start it up.
My older laptop did this a lot. I was younger and didn't want to bother my parents with the laptop heating up too much, so I grabbed a bag of frozen potatoes from the freezer and kept it under the laptop. My lap froze, but my laptop never overheated again 😃
Okay, I will tell you now that many manufacturers will not call them laptops for precisely this reason (they are "notebooks") and as an IT guy I recommend always using them on a desk or on a tray (I have a bamboo one with nice cutouts for where the fans are on the laptop).
Never, ever use a laptop while it's just resting on your bed covers.
You do not want a thing with a high-power LiPo battery in it overheating because you blocked the vents with soft furnishings or your own lap.
That shouldn't happen. Take it back and get a refund.
Or just buy a Mac with their ridiculously low powered chips instead of the power-guzzling intel/amd laptops 🤷🏻♂️
I mean, the latest M3 powered MacBooks also push quite a bit of power through their chips, and can definitely overheat under load.
Honestly, it makes me curious what OP is doing on their laptop, because any laptop, whether Apple, Intel, or AMD, shouldn't be shutting down from heat unless you're blocking the fans while also running a game or editing videos.
Wrong. A laptop can easily overheat if you block the ventilation, even when idling. If it can't get rid of it's heat, it's only going to start heating up more as it's ambient temp keeps climbing.
It's like saying a person can't die from a heat stroke when they're just sitting down. But when the ambient temp keeps going up and hits above 38, you can most certainly overheat while doing nothing at all.
Thank you totally not biased davethemacguy very cool!
Guilty as charged, but still true 😊
Not really. But I cba to discuss it with someone acting in bad faith lol.
Or someone that is incredibly knowledgeable in Apple’s tech 🤔