M6809 on battery sometimes just shuts down

Me too

I'm having the same problem. Only on battery, occasionally my 6805 will shout down preceded by about 5-7secs of the fans coming on full tilt.

Can anyone help please?

Me too, and I'm sad to report that it has occurred on AC power too. There a thread about it here (BTW I'm the M6805 "Guest" at the end of the thread).

My very uneducated guess, which has not been investigated or proved, is that there is either a heat sink/seal problem or a defective temperature sensor which is forcing a shutdown to protect the CPU -- hence the high-speed fan power-up just prior to shutdown. But it could be any number of other things too...

The M53xx series has had overheating problems that have been remedied by reapplying/improving the thermal paste around the heat sink (see here). It could also be a heat exchanger dust buildup problem, which apparently has also been a frequent problem with the M53xx series (see here).

There was another thread on this board a few weeks ago with several people having this problem. I'm hoping someone will confirm the problem and solution before I turn my unit over to the BB Geeks...

Have you guys updated the BIOS at all? The one available on emachines website should work for the m6805. After that it would be a good idea to install the AMD CPU driver from their website. Then in the power properties in Windows set the power profile to always on (no CPU throttling unless unplugged). This proceedure should tell a lot.

Lwgray, I hope you're on to something, however I've gone more than a week between incidents... What software did you think was "suspect?" Have you turned DEP off? Is a hard shutdown what DEP is supposed to do? (Sorry, novice noobee's have enquiring minds.. )

Thanks.

MH -- I updated the bios from the Emachines website and installed SP2 in January and went about a month before the first shutdown incident.

What is 'DEP' that you are referring to?

DEP is Data Execution Prevention, part of Windows XP2:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro.../sp2mempr.mspx

I have doubts that this is a DEP problem -- there's nothing on the DEP page linked above that indicates DEP will shutdown the system (let alone in the manner we're experiencing) in response to a problem.

Edit: More on DEP here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875352

As I read it, when DEP acts to prevent malicious code from running on a system it raises an "exception," not a shutdown:

I decided to do a fresh install. I have updated to SP2 and today on battery, the laptop shut down as previously described.

After the initial shut down however, it stayed on for a couple of hours without problems.

Very strange.

No on GDS. Don't think I've ever had a DEP exception. Knock wood, I've gone almost a week now without a shutdown, running exclusively on battery.

I ran GDS ver 1 for a while, didn't like it caching every page including my banking, removed it and tried Copernic, decided I really didn't need every word on my laptop indexed and removed it too. Never had any issues with the programs running, but the search tools built into various apps seem to do the job fine for me.

I don't have GDS and mine shuts down. I booted my 6805 into the BIOS screen and left it on battery for an hour. It did not shut down which may indicate that it is a software issue.

Dunno!

A couple of thoughts on this:

Booting to the BIOS screen and letting it sit idle essentially lets the CPU sit idle. So if this is a heat/heatsink-related problem this test might not trigger the event.

Perhaps you're having the problem more frequently, but I go days (and now a full week) without a shutdown. Furthermore, after a shutdown I'll reboot and resume precisely what I was doing prior (presumably meaning the exact same software is loaded) and run for the duration of the battery.

I don't know either...

Get and run a copy of Ultimate Boot CD. It has processor and or memory stressers and testers that run from a small linux kernel. That should allow you to confirm or eliminate hardware as the problem.

Out of curiosity -- is there anyone here experiencing these shutdowns who is NOT running SP2?

Had my first shutdown in several weeks today... Was on AC power for several hours when it occurred. Since this thread's been quiet I assume everyone is just living with this problem and that nobody's identified the problem/solution.

Anybody had a response from emachine or Best Buy from this problem ?

I had the same problem and lookig for a real cause i think is a hardware problem related to heat

The last winter months all the first turn on result in a shutdown after windows finish to start, and sometimes it take 2 or 3 attempts for windows start succesfully

2 o 3 times when it suddenlty suthdown (when the fan turn on at high speed) windows dont load because a fail in the hard disk, i need to start windows from the cd, run a chkdsk, found bad sectors, and then windows can start

So when is very cold in the morning, the first start, 80% of the times it shutdown

Now when is very hot like the other day, it start to shutdown 4 or 5 times, so i better turn off for that day

What i do now is always in the morning that i start the machine, i enter the bios and let it stay for about 2 or 3 minutes and then restart and never had the shutdown happen when windows start, but it happen ocasionally when im working with it

Im from Mexico and i cant go yet to the best buy from where i brought it, but i hope go soon, for a repair for the cracked hinges, and this problem, i have the 3 year best buy plan and really really hope i can exhcange it for a gateway model


aaa and my dvd burner dosn't work anymoret too, its hard to load a cd, its make a lot of noise and raerly read a cd after a lot of tries

Kayn, go read this thread about one person's experience with Emachines on this problem. I'm not aware of anyone who has run this problem through the Best Buy Geek Squad. Based on the very few posters here, and the fact that major M68xx threads at HardForum and AnandTech have virtually no mention of this problem, I think this is a pretty isolated problem. And because it's so random and so hard to replicate it's difficult to take it to a third party for a fix.