damn it damn it.
And damn you HP/Compaq for the crap design of the CQ40.

I got my CQ40-115AU in Oct. 2008, it used to overheat since then, I did use for not so heavy gaming at the beginning but no longer.
It used to freeze a lot on Windows 7 especially when playing flash videos or pretty much anything that makes use of the GPU. It also froze yesterday while running Ubuntu 11.04 (sign of GPU dying). My BIOS was already updated to the most recent version.
The extreme temperatures it reached can be very dangerous especially if its running on battery.

So minutes ago, it froze and refused to boot up (4 times of LEDs blinking >>> faulty GPU).


Update: I removed my HDD in preparation for back-up, but with the hdd removed I did plug the battery and it ran !!
I did the same test with AC adapter only and it ran as well. I finally plugged the HDD back in and the system booted just fine.


Update 2: the boot into ubuntu was fine. Upon restarting to windows 7 the laptop froze n i got the LED blinks. Hence i conclude that the sysyem did boot up in the beginning as the GPU had cooled down.


Update 3: the laptop resumed working, but as it was unreliable, I decided to open it up.
The fan had some dust, but frankly,, it was not clogged by hair or anything, I did clean it up.
The GPU looked intact, the thermal paste used it a dark purple rubber like material.
The CPU thermal paste looked bad, when I touched it , it felt like molten toothpaste and unlike high quality thermal pastes I've seen. It was also distributed unevenly over the heat sick surface area, so I redistributed it with my finger.
Assembling the whole this up was annoying, I got it back together but there were some excess screws.
Right now,, its running just fine on power saver mode in Windows 7 (professional 32bit, SP1), I also set the GPU power consumption setting to "maximize battery life".
The current temp with web browsing alone (no flash) is 51-52 degrees.



p.s. be careful when placing a hot or even warm laptop on your lap, it can damage your $stuff$ irrespective of the clothing.

This post has been edited by oc_192: Aug 30 2011, 01:40 AM


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