Acer Aspire 5100 shuts down randomly

[SALAZAR]

I have been using Acer Aspire 5100 for more than a year and it worked well so far. However, since a couple of days it has started shutting down randomly. I am not able to make out the cause of this problem, sometimes it shuts down just after half an hour and sometimes it works fine for more than two hours. This problem is getting in to my nerves now as my laptop shuts down suddenly in middle of my work. Is there anything I can do about it rather than getting it checked from a local???

[attitude.ashwin]

This might be due to overheating, have you inspected your laptop if it is warm as soon as it shuts down??? I guess your laptop fan might not be able to dispatch heat properly because of dust. This has been a common issue with some of Acer laptops. If you haven?t cleaned your laptop fans from quite a long time then this random shutdown will surely be because of overheating.

[SALAZAR]

Yes it gets warm but I don?t understand that sometimes it gets too warm in half an hour while sometimes it works fine for more than 2 hours. Why is it so?? I have haven?t opened my laptop by now, as I have mentioned it was working quite well by now and I dint even had a single issue with it. I don?t mind opening it and checking it out by can you give me some tips for cleaning the fan and all?? I haven?t tried such things on any of my laptop.

[attitude.ashwin]

There?s nothing much you have to do, you just have to open some screws to check out the fan. If you see it surrounded by dust then you can take out the fan by opening some more screws. For the cleaning purpose you can use some dry brush or blower if you have. Don?t just clean the fan and out it back, check the place from where the heat gets dispatched out of your laptop. There are possibilities it might have got filled with dust and there might be very less room for the fan to dispatch heat out. I am talking about the below area: