M6809 on battery sometimes just shuts down - Page 11

There was no foil/film on mine, but I see your point, the thermal paste/pad looked really like the one you would find on a boxed amd cpu.

Well my experience with this problem is that it is definitely contact issues with the heatsink to the CPU. I have never completely removed my heatsink to clean / reapply paste, but I find that after every 2-4 months the fan will start to run longer/come on earlier/eventually start shutting down when cold. I then have to open up the laptop and back-off each of the 4 spring loaded screws holding down the heatsink a couple of turns then tighten them back down all the way in a criss-cross pattern. After closing everything up and powering back up you can immediatley notice a difference. The fan runs a lot less/comes on a lot later. Good for another couple of months.

I do notice that the problem comes back quickest when I do a lot of moving around of the laptop. I suspect that the flexing of the chassis may cause the heatsink to float around/up down a bit on the posts/springs and it gradually loses its 'best' contact with the heatsink. It probably doesn't help that I sometimes pick it up with one hand from one of the sides - like a big cantilever.

Anyway, if you are not interested in completely removing the heatsink and cleaning and reapplying new thermal paste you can give this solution a try.

16 days since I replaced the thermal compound under the cpu cooler. I have not had a single auto shutdown, and the fan only comes on rarely. (I don't use this laptop for very cpu-intensive stuff. Gamers would have the fan come on more.) I am now happy with my laptop again.

Previously, it was an embarrassment, and could not be taken in public, for fear it would not start. It could not be used for PowerPoint presentations for fear it would die during the presentation. I would not trust any valuable data to it, and would not work on long documents, as it might shut down either losing or corrupting the files. I was ready to junk it, although it was too expensive and new (2 years) to throw away.

I will update every now and again to let other users know how permanent this fix is.

Good Luck. I found that my m6811 would be stable for periods of months even before I fired it back up. It has been replaced by a 7422GX (GW) after a coffee spill on the keyboard. I started rebuilding the M6811 and broke off a screw and have a new set on order. I have changed the bios and will complete soon (depending on my work schedule).

Updates can be found here > GRAND EXPERIMENT

Eunix

I don't know if there's a correlation, but this has occurred on two occasions already. Sometimes, the fan will not come on at all, and the whole laptop gets hot, including the keys. It usually ends up freezing, and won't boot back up again until things cool completely down. Has anyone had this happen to them?

I have not seen the problem where the machine will not power back up until it entirely cools down.

You may need to check to see if your heatsink is really loose and you may have excessive dust in your machine.

Eunix

OK I too have a eMacines M6811. I have mine 1.2M of memory so forget the memory BS above on the thread. My 6811 goes into thermal shutdown through the day or late at night. I used to have the boot up power shut down issues but I do not have them now. I can only think this is more related to having the powerplug out and running on battery more often. I try to think about this as my battery overheats when I use it sometimes on battery mode with the feel it will melt the plastic.
I have tried laying my computer on a oven flat pan I use to heat sink. Doesn't work. I have elevated the bak of the laptop an inch or two. I still get the occasional issue and it seems to come on for several weeks and then disappears. It is so random .

My biggest issue beyond the fact I have like 20 different screens open when I work and have to get back in is I carry a large filen for Microsoft Outlook. When it is open and I get the hard shutdown when it reboots it checks my personal PST file for corruotions. For me 3 years of work has built up a large PST file which on Outlook is not easily broken down into small files. Yes I could archive it but I need access to the files from 3 years earlier by company accounts etc. ANyway, the wait is like 20 minutes to get into email so you can see how this stupid M6811 issue o power shutdown can really hurt.

Also I can't be sending in my laptop computer with all my business data on it to so numnuts who let's the box sit for a week charges me for shipping and then says they tested it and it never went down.

It would be nice if not pretty to have a remedy to install an external fan unit to pull and push air though the laptop.

My thoughts and issues are the power supply transistor or whatever it is goes into a state where it gets out of control and starts to heat. The thermal hieating can almost be instantaneous as it must be pulling the maximum current. I remember from my engineering school, although I forget just about everything now some 20+ years later that through some experiments putting current into a low ohm resister or a transistor and measuring the thermal increase in temperature was so rapid. I can imagine that the fan tries to kick in too late and the 3 seconds it stays on is not enough to cool the temperatur below thermal shutoff. This shutoff is supoposedly saving your system.

Anyway, I am so frustrated. EMachines clearly has seen this problem time and time again. Gateway who bought eMachines cares less. You would think they could explain in detail a fix as it has to be a fully understood problem but they emachines and Gateway continue to push it under the rug. Since eMachines is now effectively defunct except for refurbished sales through tigerdirect where I bought mine, I assume they do not care. The reality is we are the ones most likely to purchase another laptop in the future. It bothers me so much. Anyway if anyone has come up with a fix please let me know in this thread.

For all you business people that still have an emachines 6811 and the boss won't get a new one just yet I feel sorry for. I concur with the above folks it is a great machine except for the poweroff problem.

A little off topic but I know these guys have M6911 machines and are experiencing the same issues:
Also for the business people, IT people who visit this link I know of a company/site that will provide T1 lines and floor prices. You can get T1 lines for voice and data for the domestic US at the lowest prices in one stop and compare 20 carriers. The first is T1cheaprates.com and the sales team who supports it is four people from market2go.com Discount Telecom Services. I figured I'd put a plug in for these as they too have the same M6811 machines with the same thermal power issues.

Well, it's been a month since I replaced the thermal paste under my cpu's heatsink with AS5 on my eMachines m6805. I still have had absolutely no auto shutdowns or problems of any sort. I'm now running Windows Vista 32 bit beta 2 build 5384, and it is surprisingly slick and stable for a beta. I'm having no heat problems. My cooling fan rarely even comes on.

I'll keep you all posted in another month, but I think (and hope) this (the thermal paste replacement) permanently solved my auto shutdown problem.

Replacing thermal paste

I've just replaced my m6805's thermal paste on friday.. It had that piece of foil that was mentioned here and yea, it totally looked like something they forgot to take off.

I used it for about 20 hours straight after replacing the paste.. eventho it was under heavy load (compiling kde from sources), it didn't shut down.

However, my shutdowns were usually after coldbooting... so I let the laptop cool down overnight and tried again today, coldboot on battery, go straight to compile something and no shutdowns.

My theory is that after being really hot and then cooling down, the original thermal paste + foil get hard or crack preventing heat from flowing from the processor to the heatsync.

I have the same problem with the automatic shutdowns, I have opened up the computer (M6811) twice and completely cleaned it and tightened the heatsink screws. The first time the computer worked fine for a month and it returned. I never played arounf with the thermal paste, nor did I remove the heatsink, but I want to give it a try. Could anyone post pics or details on how to do this properly. Thanks.

It's not to hard considering you've already done the hardest part (opening it up)

so just do that, remove the heat sync by taking out the 5 screwes.. then there will probably be a piece of tin foil stuck to the heatsink where it touches the processor. Remove the foil, clean up the thermal paste completely and apply new thermal paste, not too much, just enough to cover the visible metal part of the processor.

clean up/vacuum the fans and make sure there's no obstructions making it hard for air to come out, and make sure the fans spin smoothly.

Dont forget to plug in both fans and dont over-tighten the heatsink screws cause they're cheap and break easily.


I didn't really take other pics than the ones i posted, but it was not hard at all, you just need to be gentle.


As an additional note, I just added 1gb of ram, so I have 1gb + 256mb and it's working well so far. I'll replace the one inside the computer later on to get 2gb.




regards

One month and 10 days (since cleaning heatsink and applying Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound) and still no problems. WooHoo!!!!!!!!!

Have tried Vista Beta 2 too. (Waiting for rc1, as beta 2 is stilll too slow although it is beautiful).

I sent back my laptop... for the second time, however this time I included a detailed account of every symptom as well as every fix I had tried. I also included my chat logs from their own tech support. I got it back within a week and it works fine. There was no documentation as to what exactly was wrong with it in the first place or what they did to fix it. But it works, so for now I am semi-happy. I would be very happy had I not had to go through this in the first place.

Good luck all!

After replacing the thermal paste, everything was fine until yeserday. It did not shutdown when cold-booting like before, but when I was compiling a program that took a lot of processor.. the fans were pushed to the limit and it shutdown...! ..

LexDivina, was your laptop under warranty? I called yesterday and they asked me to recalibrate my battery... how ridiculous.. considering this happens when it's plugged in mostly.

Im gonna call em again until they agree to rma it...

I had bought my laptop on ebay and with proof of the date of purchase, they said I was good for a year from that date.
The first guy I talked to told me to wipe it clean and reinstall OS. He thought it was a software conflict.
The second guy had me do a battery reconfig. When that didn't work, they issued an RMA. I explained I had bought a colling pad, a new power supply cord, and had tested it out in different locations, so I knew it was not the outlet.
I got it back, hit the power button, and it shut down same as before. I was irate. I called and the girl explained my case was not very detailed. Hence she issued me another RMA and asked for extensive documentation, which I gladly provided.
Got it back the second time, and nothing wrong so far.

Thanks for the details...

It sucks that they dont acknowledge this as a manufaturing deffect considering how common it is.

I'll will give them a call this week and see if I can get it fixed.

http://www.m53xxseriessettlement.com/

Check this web site it has a class action against eMachines but only covers the m53 series, there is an email there so we can wirte and try to get something going for our series. I know it may not work, but it is worth a shot.

By the way cleared thermal paste and did just like juandj said, no problems so far. Thanx

Well, yesterday (July 4, 2006) my m6805 shutdown while in use again. May 9, 2006, I had cleaned the dried, cracked thermal paste off the heatsink and replaced it with Arctic Silver 5. For almost 2 months it ran trouble-free. But I suppose the old auto-shutdown is back. It remains to be seen how bad of a problem this will be. If it gets as bad as it was, this laptop will be unreliable for work (it may just shut down while you have a file open, corrupting that file as well as others), as well as an embarrassment to be seen with (sometimes before, it would shut down 3 or 4 times before finishing to boot the OS).

I don't think eMachines or Gateway cares if their products are reliable. I will never again buy from Gateway.

just for curiosity - how are ur battery alarms being setting up? no action, stand by, shut down ... when low (at what percentage?)? what about memtest?

cheers ...

Chris Brady's Memtest-86 reports 0 errors after 3 passes.
Battery alarms are set to "do nothing" for low battery, and "hibernate" for critical battery level. But I never use on battery power anyway. I always have A/C plugged in. Otherwise, it is set to never hibernate. It will hibernate, but when it comes back from hibernation usually one thing or another does not work quite right without a reboot. So, other power options are set not to hibernate.

I also never had this problem until the laptop was about 2 years old. The new memory and slot-load DVD/CD-RW has been in there the whole 2 years, (except when I sent it back to eMachines for cracked hinge repair). The tip on the A/C adapter is poorly made, and has had to be soldered back on twice. My screen has always been pixel-perfect, and I have never had the "popular" screen flicker problem.