M6809 on battery sometimes just shuts down - Page 9

If we knew what the problem was with the 53xx series, I would bet that it's the same problem we are having. Maybe I'm one of the "lucky" ones. My laptop only shuts down when I play a game or do alot of web development with multiple programs open and switching back and forth. If I just browse the web or just do minor tasks, then it runs fine. If I run memtest, it shuts down. Anything that seems to be heavy graphic or cpu causes the shutdown.

Lawyers are not supposed to be evil. We are a small people and to have our voice heard by eMachine (a large corp), we need some help. Lawyers provide this help. Try it, call eMachines and tell them your laptop turns off, and see what type of BS troubleshooting they suggest.

I have tried to contact that law firm through their page, stating that I was having the same problem with a 68xx series. I have heard nothing yet...it's been about 4 months. Maybe if enough of us contact them they will try to extend the coverage.

That was my point in posting that I sent them a message. I would encourage anyone who has had the overheating problem on the 68xx machines to write to them. It may cause some type of action.

It is not a matter of "feeding" Lawyers, but a company should not have the luxury of putting out an inferior product.

Think of how much money emachines made on those laptops. Sure, they had some returns and have had to pay shipping charges, but I would be willing to bet you that 90% of the machines that rolled out the door were paid for, good bad or indifferent and that all of their returns that were sitting on the warehouse floor were snatched up by some second tier marketer and sold on secondary websites, ebay etc. Not to mention the number of flat out broken machines that were sold by the independent people.

Arima certainly got paid for every order. Now If I were to launch an independent laptop and put it out on the market and it was faulty, I would be filing for bankrupcy as a small business. Why should large businesses be held to a lesser standard.

If a class action was filed against eMachines, it could result in a replacement machine or a check. Now, I bought my machine from a discount house and I really do like the machine, (except for the problems). Even a check for a couple of hundred dollars would ease the pain.

The way I look at it, a laptop is a tool and if that tool is unreliable, then it is not worth the money it took to make it.

Suppose you bought a car to take you to work every day but could not depend on that car's ability to stay running for your commute. Then what would that car be worth to you?

Eunix

I can't agree more. The problem that has us so frustrated, is that they cannot fix it. If you take your car in because it will not start, within a week max it will come out of the garage running like a dream. Even if that meant having to have a regional master tech come in. With our laptops, it seems the repair facility is not skilled whatsoever. I sent my m6811 in countless times for the flickering and they did not do a thing to it. Same goes with countless members dealing with this shutdown issue.

I am in total agreement with you base premise in that we have warranties to cover problems with material flaws because we can not expect 100% good production and any assembly line.

I purchased my machine as a test box for 64 bit software and have come to love the little box. There is a certain amount of reliability that is expected and if things are not right, then you exercise the warranty.

The problem here is that even after exercising the warranty, the systems have not been fixed nor does eMachines want to admit that there is a problem. The sheer number of people who have had this problem on this and other threads, lead me to belive that we may have a systemic problem which has to be addressed on some form or fashion.

Eunix

Well, I'm new to this thread, but here goes. I bought an M6811 16 months ago, and had the hinge cracks when it was 11 months old. I sent it in, and it came back in great shape, but soon developed the shutdown problem. I tried BIOS updating, setting the power prefs, reinstalling the OS, even the Geek Squad (not recommended). I finally got the machine back, and, since eMachines was stonewalling me (my year was up), cracked it open myself. Using an excellent pictorial guide from http://emachines.fiza.ca, I removed the heatsink, cleaned it up, polished it a bit with 600 sandpaper, reseated it with plain old Radio Shack heatsink compound, and, since I'd heard that the screws on the heasink seemed to work loose, set them with cyanoacrylate screw bonding compound.
Of course, you wouldn't want to try this on a machine under warranty...
The machine has been in daily use since in a music studio, running high-cpu utilization apps, no problems so far after 2 week's time.

I really believe that this should be a recall issue, and let Gateway know how I felt about it. So far, no reply.

Warranties and other nonsense

(lwgray) "I'll try not to get too off topic, but some of your words look like the Eagles song "Get Over It" when they sing "you haven't been the same since you had your little crash, but you might feel better if they gave you some cash".

Lwgray this is borderline insulting to most mature adults. Emachines took a large sum of money from each of us on the pretext of supplying us with a reliable product and also supplied a promise (warranty) to repair any manufacturing defects. If they hadn't made that promise I suspect none of us would have considered handing over the $ and would have looked elsewhere.
Emachines has reneged on that promise and now you suggest that to seek satisfaction from the offending party is somehow immature or greedy. Do you work for eMachines? Perhaps a Gateway stockholder? I can't imagine why you would say such a thing otherwise. What emachines has done amounts to fraud and outright theft. I don't believe anyone in their right mind would or should just decide to "get over it" or blame themselves when they are robbed in this fashion.

(lwgray) "It's not always somebody else's fault when things don't go your way."

Well, sometimes it IS someone elses fault and this is one of those times!

(Kooloser) "Here is an excerpt from my live chat transcript"

Your transcript sounds exactly like what I experienced with those nabobs at emachines. Sickeningly polite but thoroughly unhelpful, consistently repeating the company's stone walling rhetoric while ignoring the facts of the issue.

Moving on: Since removing the thermal paste the unit (M6811) has been running well although two nights ago I experienced the first spontaneous shutdown from the desktop after the unit had been on all day. The unit was under no processing stress at the time. I still can't imagine why the absence of thermal paste should effect such a notable change in character. Perhaps it was just a coincidence. I think I'll reapply the thermal paste and see what happens.

After reading olyteddy's hypothesis and applying it to my machine, I think I am now firmly in the "change of temperature" camp.

Had great difficulty finding this thread via google (eventually manually scrolling through this forum until I found a suitable topic). There's probably a lot of other people in a similar situation.

Had my E6805 for nearly 2 years, started randomly shutting down (after 3 secs of high fan speed) about a year ago. At first it was most likely to happen in the mornings during the first 30 minutes of being powered on, now it is just as likely to happen after several hours.

The shutdowns occur with both XP SP2 and 64-bit linux. It happens whilst the laptop is idling (at login screen for instance) or during high load (whilst compiling linux apps). Thinking it could be a problem due to overheating I have removed the heatsink, replaced the original thermal pad with thermal greese and refitted - this seemed to stop it for a while, but it's hard to say as I wasn't using the laptop much during that time.

Nothing really new to add to the discussion, but I'd like to answer a previous poster who asked why the fan operated after idling at the BIOS screen more often then when idling in windows - this is because the windows idle loop employs techniques to lower CPU power (such at the HLT instruction, throttling CPU speed etc) whereas the BIOS setup screen probably uses a simple infinite loop.

I too like many others have been struggling with the auto-shutdown issue. I have M6811 a bit more than 2 years and I really love the machine. It started couple months ago and it's getting worse. Like others, it's totally random. Sometimes the machine will works for hours without any problem, but sometimes it shutdowns many times per hour.

Fortunately, I bought this from Best Buy and I have their 3 years service contract. I will probably push for other brand replacement since this is my 4th machine. Previous machine has various common problem assosiated with this machine like cracked hinges, flickering screen, etc.

I also just bought a new lappy because I could not afford random shutdown. So, I have time luxury to push for repair / replacement with BB.

I wish you all good luck with this machine. What a shame this machine would have been a great one if only it did not have so much problem.

I've got an m6805 that also had a serious case of this shutdown problem... Would do it immediately 90% of the time I restarted from hibernate, 3 or 5 times in a row (battery or plugged in). Since my warranty was done and I love to open my stuff up, opted to try replace the junk factory thermal pad with some Arctic Silver 5. Cleaned off the surfaces of the chip and heatsink with some acetone on a clean lint-free cotton cloth. Was easy as cake following that tutorial from http://emachines.fizi.ca.

So far so good. Had a couple problem-free start ups so far (very exciting). I'll test it out some more and let you guys know what happens.

[edit] cranked down the heatsink screws real tight too, just thought I'd mention.

Don't think the tightness of the screws really matters; The heatsink is held down by the force of the springs.

But at least they shouldn't come loose on their own now.

Anyway, it did sponataneously shut down on me once, and that's been it so far. Many successful start ups, unlike before. So, at the very least the heatsink fix should improve the situation, even if it doesn't completely fix it...

Good luck guys

do you guys think the flickering has anything to do with the
auto shutdown? because i noticed that if i just close down the
lcd and leave it for an hour or so(left to go eat) and it didnt
even shut off at all. so... maybe thats the cause? or is it just
for me?

Not really. I think the flickerins is due to pinching of the video cable that runs from the screen to the motherboard.

I could be wrong but it seems that way to me.

Eunix

6811 problems, similar and yet....

I have an M6811 768 mb ram, 80 gig hd 3400+ etc...

Here at home, I've always had trouble with the Ltop running plugged in.. It shuts down without warning when I'm plugged in here at home. Last 2-3 months have especially been bad.

But, if I go somewhere else, a hotel, relatives house, or even in the car, it works fine plugged in. I've only had this problem at home. which leads me to wonder if the wiring in this place aint the greatest, but my moms laptop works fine no problems.. My laptop is the only 64bit machine in the house tho, could the 64s need some "cleaner" current to work with?

I've tried surge suppressors.. my fairly good quality belkin suppressor is very good, but it seems to be worse if I leave it plugged in thru that then just plugged into the wall, not a whole lot of difference really. I will say that it does have the high fan speed kicking in just before it shuts off when plugged in here at home.. anywhere else it operates just fine.

Sounds screwy doesnt it?

Best buy cant find anything wrong.. not that they really tried persay.... And they call themselves technical support pah! my initial 1 year warranty expired during the time it was at BB, but I'd be happy with the thing if it werent for this shut down problem at home....

Any ideas?

Feel like adventurous? Take the keyboard off and perform a good vacuum cleaning. If not then at least try to (power) vacuum all openings (vent holes, pcmcia slot, sd card slot etc ..). It works on mine HP5430, keep shutting itself off after a few hours work.

hmmm... dont see how that would help my power problem... unless that was meant for some1 previously...

Dust collected on the heat dissapation grids reduces the amount of the air flow and the dust particles help to trap the heat inside.

eunix

hmmm.. vacuum cleaning alone didnt do it... went to BB and got a small ups box.

THAT has actually taken care of the problem...

But, now, I downloaded mobile meter... this does not have an apci section in the bios... would I have to update said bios? cause it sure strikes me as screwy that the machine would be shbipped without an apci management thing...

That and the back air vents.. the left one seems to be doing majority of the exhaling while the right I can barely a thing...

HD temp is about 30-34c. dont think thats too bad myself... when idle, cpu generally sits at bout 800mhz, when I'm running sims 2, its at 2.23ghz....

I actually was right in that it was something with the quality of the power input was screwing with this Ltop. and not so much dirt or dust.

I've always been careful to have airflow aplenty as much as possible with my computers as both dust and heat have been a concern...

I'll problem still get another laptop down the road, theres cracks in the outside of the hinge areas probably from my accidental dropping when I was unplugging the power jack [cursed things are rather sticky]...