Student-Contributed Wiki
An awesome team of students from our education program made this wiki.
Your laptop is either very hot or louder than normal, and maybe unexpectedly turning off
Make sure there is nothing covering the vent. Only use the laptop on a hard surface (such as wood) rather than a soft surface (carpet or blanket) to eliminate chances of blocking the vent.
Check the temperature of your CPU. Software can be downloaded online for free (search “CPU Temperature Software Windows”, such as HWMonitor) to determine temperature. Open the laptop, locate and remove the heatsink, then clean the surface of the CPU and heatsink. Lastly reapply thermal grease and then reassemble the heatsink and laptop.
Your laptop suddenly crashes and a blue screen with an error code appears. If using windows 8 or later a sideways unhappy face is shown
The hard drive may have failed. Use the external program HDTune to determine the status of your hard drive. Replace hard drive if necessary.
Your laptop may be overheating due to a faulty capacitor. Open up the back of the laptop and visually check the capacitors for damage. If damaged, replace the damaged capacitor.
Computer takes longer than usually to perform tasks.
Use the external program “HDTune” to determine the status of your hard drive. If the hard drive is faulty, replace the hard drive.
Due to its close proximity to the CPU, a faulty capacitor may cause damage to the CPU and make your computer run slower. Open up the back of the laptop and visually check the capacitors for damage. Replace capacitors if damaged.
Your battery becomes much hotter than normal, is not charging, or drains at a considerably faster rate than normal under light load.
If the battery is not charging, or draining at a considerably faster rate under normal load, it is most likely the battery. Please ensure you are not running the computer under load by opening task manager and verifying the CPU utilization, is not more than 30% under light load.
If the battery is hot, first turn off device immediately and remove battery. Your battery may look like it has expanded. Examine battery for visible damage. Plug in your laptop to a wall outlet without the battery and attempt to turn it on. If the laptop works normally, this confirms the issue is isolated to the battery.
Devices you plug into the laptop do not show up on the computer or connect/disconnect at random
Plug multiple devices that are known to be functional into each port. If none of the devices appear on your operating system, replace the port.
Search the settings menu to verify the most recent driver version for the specific port. If the driver is out of date, then update it.
Check the strength of your wireless network on other devices. If other devices have the same issue, your network may be the issue. If other devices have no problem then restart the laptop’s wireless card. If the problem persists, restart the laptop. If the problem still persists, the wireless card may need to be replaced.
When using the camera it does not work and an image does not appear
Run hardware troubleshooter to determine if the faulty camera may be due to recently installed hardware or devices. Remove problematic devices or programs from laptop and relaunch camera.
The camera driver may be faulty. If so reinstall the camera driver and see if this fixes the problem.
The software will become unresponsive. The camera may look frozen on a frame. The camera may look black. Restart the program using the camera. If the problem persists, then restart the laptop. If the issue is still there, the camera may be defective.
Verify that the program using the camera has permission to do so. If the program does not, click on the option permitting that program to use the camera module. This option will most likely appear as a “allow program x to access the camera” popup.
Search the settings menu to verify the most recent driver version for the camera. If the driver is out of date, then update it.
If the program using the camera module detects the camera and confirms its permissions, but the image either does not appear, or is not correct, the camera module may be faulty. In this case, the camera module must be replaced.
