dell shuts down

[diggit]

about every 45 minutes my dell laptop shuts down.  I don't think it is overheating and I have it up off the table.  Not running on battery so that shouldn't be the problem.  Any advise.

[Beomagi]

You can try using speedfan
http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php

it should find the temp probes on your motherboard. It may not know which one is your cpu - but if you run something cpu intensive such as super-pi or prime, you'd know which one as you'd see the cpu temp jump.

prime95 url - http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm

If you can run say prime 95 for 5 minutes (note the graphs in speed fan to see what temps you're getting!) then it's probably not your cpu temp causing the crash.


another possibility is memory. you can use prime95 to check your memory using the memory torture test. You can also use http://www.memtest86.com/

when it shuts down, note the exact time and check your event viewer.

start->run->"eventvwr"

look for warnings or errors especially under application and system.