Laptop randomly died

[JohnKimble]

My laptop suddenly died after a short airplane flight. Immediately after setting it up post-flight it had several issues where it would randomly shut off and restart. It worked fine for a couple hours and was even able to watch some videos/play some games. It then shut off again and no longer turns back on. Pressing the power button will just cause the fans to spin at max for a few seconds before it turns back off. I haven't really tried much outside of attempting to start it without the battery but that has not worked. The laptop is a Sager np8250.

 

[PizzaTheHutt]

It may be temperature - try repasting the CPU and GPU, also, if you can, run memtest86 on it.

 

[JohnKimble]

That's what i thought originally but it seems kind of sudden. I considered temps as the possible cause back when it had the first random shutoffs and had coretemp on but the temps were out of the ordinary. As for memtest, it would probably be hard as i can't even enter bios right now. Like it's literally just a black screen + max fans for 10s or so before it just auto shuts off. Unsure if it's relevant but it seems it's only the cpu fan that spins.

So something peculiar, i managed to get the laptop to turn back on by literally just blowing some air into the back. I honestly do not feel convinced that all the problems are over unless someone can suggest a reason why that could even work when this pc was literally on the brink of death earlier.

Yep not totally solved, PC randomly restarted on medium load. Temperature in the 70's-80's And once again with low load just streaming twitch.

I wonder how probable something like microscopic metal fragments causing a short circuit. I had one of the heatsink extensions dislodge during the flight and move around a bit. It may possibly explain why blowing a bit of air changed it from unable to boot completely to just the shutdown issues.

 

[PizzaTheHutt]

Now that it's working to some degree and you can see the temperatures, I would suspect either the heatsink fan or the memory as if the PC were to allocate to the bad blocks, the PC may shut down randomly (unlikely but possible).

For now, just check the airflow inside the laptop isn't obstructed (wires dislodged or something like that) and then that the fans actually generate any form of airflow through the heatsink. If you have thermal paste to hand, a repaste can't do any harm. Also, maybe reseat the memory modules (once again, unlikely anything has happened but good to be sure).

 

[JohnKimble]

One of the steps i did take before was clean out the fans of dust and there was definitely quite a bit. However it did not immediately fix the problem though, as it still had the peculiar inability to boot until that random airblow on the underside. I've once had memory related crashes on another pc but that would usually result in a BSOD rather than the restart with no BSOD or error log. For whatever unknown reason the laptop has not had the odd restart or boot issue for about a day without me having actually done anything that would fix it. I am not wholly convinced the problem is fixed but i have no idea what could cause such a thing.

Seems it just happened again, 5 days in between the last reset though.

 

[JohnKimble]

Somehow went through several days without any of the shutdowns happening but all of a sudden when it did happen it was accompanied with shutdowns ~1-10m after turning it back on combined with difficulty turning the pc on. When attempting to turn it on it will just flash lights/keyboard for a second and shut back down. Also it has shutdown within the bios. I'm suspecting some kind of random loose power connection but i have no idea how to figure it out if that's the case. If it is the only solution would be to send it back to the manufacturer for some form of tech support.

A trend i seem to notice is that the laptop will have periods of no problems for a few days and then suddenly die for anywhere between 1-24 hours before going back to that period.

Once again the same thing has happened twice. Laptop randomly shuts down and attempts to restart but unable to start up for more than a second, after a few minutes it suddenly starts to work again.

Repeat of the same thing, managed to get it work after a hour or so only for it to shutdown a few seconds after waking from sleep the following morning.

 

[JohnKimble]

I'm basically guessing right now it's some form of mobo or internal power connector damage. Without parts warranty i'm assuming that it's pretty much going to cost a large amount to fix or replace?