Laptop keeps shutting down randomly

[yosefalvo]

This laptop has an Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 processor and 4GB RAM so its not new. When my laptop started shutting down randomly, at first, I tried everything to update drivers and run diagnostics and nothing seemed to fix the problem. So then I finally decided to wipe the hard drive clean, and reinstall windows 7 Home Premium (32 bit). The same problem kept happening. Next, I cleaned the hard drive again, and installed a dual boot of Linux and Windows 7. At first, Windows 7 worked fine, until the first update ran. After the update, the problem returned. I've been using Linux when I can, because the laptop has never shut down while in Linux, and its been a few months since I switched to a dual boot configuration. Sometimes I prefer to boot into Windows to use some applications that only run there, especially my wireless printer. Does anyone have any thoughts why this problem would occur only in Windows 7? Sometimes it shuts down before I reach the password screen, and other times it shuts down unexpected while working on something. Because it never happens in Linux, I feel like its a Windows issue, while it could be something hardware or driver related that Linux simply does not use. Any ideas or thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[friedlander.m.s]

It could be an update that causes this...
(turn all automatic updates off) and re-test.

More likely: The CPU heat sink is clogged with dust or the fan has stopped running. Disassemble and clean / verify fan.

 

[yosefalvo]

I agree the heat sink likely needs some cleaning, while I'm not sure this is the cause because it NEVER fails when I boot to Linux. I can leave it on for days in Linux, and it does not shut down. For this reason, I hesitate to take apart a laptop that isn't so easy to reassemble as a tower is.
The Windows update likely is related, while I want to have the updates. I suppose I was hoping that someone else has seen this and knows if there is some setting that I can manually set to fix it, perhaps in the registry startup...