Cold weather damage to notebook? Help!

I'd probably say the only way is if you notice things going wrong. To be honest, this sort of thing going wrong is rare, but its a precaution worth taking. The manual states an hour to allow it to warm up in a proper enviroment, but I'd give it as long as possible before you next need to use it

when your computer is coming from a cold environment, let it thaw out GRADUALLY

don't put it by a heat source or somewhere warm. If you could heat step it that would be ideal. (say you took it out of a snow bank... put it in your cold garage, then move it to your cold basement, then move it to your semi-warm next room, then when its regular room temp to be safe just leave it a while longer).

There are several BIG problems you could face. One of which being condensation - you woulndt boot your computer if you just poured a glass of water on the keyboard right...

the second is rapid heating. If you've ever taken a glass from the freezer and tried pouring hot coffee in it, you'll notice it cracks and explodes.... yea... nuff said.

Umm.. You might want to read the post by Champi0n... On your comments about the condensation bit not happening... did you totally disassemble the unit, use electronics cleaner on everything, unplug all the ribbon cables /connectors and clean? Did you luck out this time?... Only time will tell... PS: Don't know if you have complete care, but you might want to consider purchasing while the unit is still working if there has been condensation... .

The condensation threat is gone in a couple of hours at normal room temp and humidity. When I was in the Air Force, we used electronics outdoors at down to zero F for 8 hours, then bring them in for the night, five days a week, with no problems. As long as you let the electronics acclimate before powering it up, then everything is fine.

Batteries though hate the cold. We went through twice as many rechargeable battery packs during the winter as in the summer.

DOnt do it again! Treat the laptop like a baby unless you want to buy a new one!

Most of the posters in this thread have no idea what they are talking about. The #1 problem you should be worried about is condensation which could short circuit some connections inside your laptop and destroy the electronics.

Other than that cold weather is actually good for your electronics. Computers run better when they are in cold environments. An ideal environment for your computer would be inside a fridge (not a freezer though, thats too cold).

The best thing you did was shut it down when you noticed the slowness from being exposed. Being a repair tech for years in a sub zero area, I got a lot of that and as long as you give the system time to warm back to operating temp and hopefully you dont get any condensation, then you should be fine. The LCD should have had the most effect from the cold... those are quite funny when you freeze them.

Dude..theres no way you can "kill" the performance of a computer by booting it up from a cold environment. If anything, the condensation can get in between the areas where the pins contact the socket and cause "rotting" of the pins but that is never seen unless your using a Prometeria or a Asetek phase change machine that literally brings the CPU to sub-zero temperatures or using one of those weird thermal plate thingys..forgot what they were called. Even with those hyper-cooled solutions, you rarely get pin "rot" if you follow the instructions. If you do it's because you didnt' insulate the socket properly and ran one of those phase change machines for like 2 years 24/7 365 days a year at -32 temps. WORST case scenario I can see to your laptop CPU heat spreader cracking BUT I'm 99.9% sure the Core/Core2's for the laptop don't come with heat spreaders; you just put the thermal paste directly on the core. I have heard of people cracking AMD heat spreaders on top of the newer 64, X2, and FX processors but those were defective batches or they were stupid and over tightened the HSF.

ANYWAY, my point is don't worry, next time don't do it or just turn it on and let it slowly "defrost" so you don't get condensation.

EDIT: And i think with the newer land grid array package from Intel wouldn't cause any issues with pin rot since the pins aren't on the chip but on the mobo itself...kinda off topic but if anyone has a Conroe and wants/has phase change let me know = )

Starting a HD under those conditions can cause data loss and damage.

Chances of that happening? 1 out of 4? 1 out of 3? still only 25%..33.3333%?

There is something called MILSPEC. Dell is NOT. So leaving your lappy out for the night is not a good idea. You have to let it set in a VERY dry environment for a while and let it come back to room temp for a bit before I would even touch it.

Heh...You think those are small odds. Chances of losing important data at 25-33% is a huge risk. If you tell me when I reboot my laptop I have 1 chance in 4 of losing 1 weeks worth of work. I wont boot it lol.