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Demira wrote:

OK, noted. Thank you for that reasoning. Overheating is back on the list of culprits. In absence of a box fan, if I keep the laptop in an air conditioned room (down to 16 degrees Celsius), right next to the air conditioner, keep the laptop on a table (as has been the case so far) and perhaps prop up the 4 corners of the laptop to allow colder air to flow freely under the laptop, do you think that would be sufficient for external cooling? I could also try putting it in the fridge but worried about moisture so wanted an alternative.

If your fridge is running at 4C, or higher (warmer), I don't see moisture being a problem unless you leave it there for more than an hour... I do have a question, are you trying just to extract your information? If so, getting a cheap SATA-to-USB enclosure to copy your information would be an easier alternative and you wouldn't need to disassemble the entire laptop (I think)

Overheating will never be a complete explanation, since it at at least one point refused to turn on at all when cold, correct? It may still be some portion of the problem.

Moisture may very easily be a problem if you put it in the fridge. The air in the fridge is dry, but the air inside the laptop when you first put it in the fridge is not, and water will probably condense out of it as heat leaves the laptop by conduction. If you could quickly exchange all the air inside the laptop with air from in the fridge, it would be safe, but it may take stress test loads to get the fan to run from that ambient temperature, and even then there are likely to be pockets of air in the laptop that its fan doesn't move well.

If you're out in the desert somewhere with a dew point of ~0C or below, it's probably possible to make this work safely (run the computer's fan in this very low-humidity environment for a bit before putting it in the fridge). Beware that indoor humidity can easily be much, much higher than outdoor, even if it's just due to water vapor in your breath. If the lowest humidity environment you can find to prep it is a dew point of 5-10C, it would probably be alright, but I wouldn't risk it. If you're in a 15+C dew point part of the world (most of central or eastern time zones in the US, for one), it's a really bad idea.

As long as the laptop is running, I don't see moisture as a big concern if you stick it in the fridge. Condensation happens when air hits a colder surface and is cooled down. WIth a powered on laptop, this is the opposite. The laptop is hotter than the air around it, which will cause the relative humidity to drop even further. Condensation can happen when you pull the laptop out from the fridge though if parts of it has become cooler than the outside air.

@Yan @DPete27 @qmacpoint @synthtel2 @Demolition

Thank you all for your replies and suggestions.

To clarify:
1. I do want my data from my laptop.
2. Would like to get my laptop working again, without spending too much (i.e. less than £100).
3. If the battery is gone then I am okay to use the laptop connected to the mains if / when any other problems are fixed. Hence please don't let the possibility of a gone battery cause you to write the whole laptop off.

Regarding the issue:
A. Overheating is still at the top of the list of suspects.
B. When the problem first started, the laptop would not switch on at all. After I removed the battery, and connected it to mains, it started. May be a problem with the battery as many have said, don't know as it did then work with the battery reinserted. This, combined with the sudden shutdown problems, led me to believe it was a problem with the power supply unit.

Yan wrote:

Is 14 minutes longer than previously before it turned off? Put the setting as low as necessary, although anything below 10% will probably make your computer unusable...24 degrees Celsius...That's unrealistically low; I wouldn't expect anything below 40° C for an idle computer. Something's wrong. You could try another programme; I like CoreTemp.

It stayed on once for 25 mins (from cold). I believe 14 mins (from cold) is the second longest time it has stayed on since the problem started. I'm going to try another programme to check the temp.

Okay, plan of action:
1. I have a standing fan which is open at the back and front (i.e. a grill like structure at back and front) which I could use as an alternative to a box fan if I can find a way to position it. Will bring the temp down as low as possible in air conditioned room (down to 16 degrees Celsius), keep the laptop right in front of the air conditioner, with box fan alternative under it, prop up the laptop enough to allow air to move freely. I have decided to try this first rather than putting it in the fridge - don't want to risk moisture damage whether that be during the fridge operation or after taking it back out.
2. Then switch on. Set max processor state to 35%.
3. Download new software to check temp. Run.
4. Note how long it stays on. Note temperatures reported by software, while also baring in mind that temperatures of certain components may not be checked by software.
If it stays on longer than 14 mins, and especially if it stays on longer than 25 mins, we can be reasonably certain that overheating is part of the problem. May repeat scenario from cold to be sure.
5. Depending on what I find I will decide whether I should dismantle the laptop.

Will do this later today and report back this eve or tomorrow. If any of you have any suggestions or improvements to add let me know.

demolition wrote:

As long as the laptop is running, I don't see moisture as a big concern if you stick it in the fridge. Condensation happens when air hits a colder surface and is cooled down. WIth a powered on laptop, this is the opposite. The laptop is hotter than the air around it, which will cause the relative humidity to drop even further. Condensation can happen when you pull the laptop out from the fridge though if parts of it has become cooler than the outside air.

My concern is stagnant pockets of air inside the laptop, containing moisture from outside the fridge but being cooled via conduction through the case of the laptop. Most laptops have a fair bit of airspace that doesn't get much flow.

Demira wrote:

Okay, plan of action:

Sounds good.

@ everyone

COOLING LAPTOP
So positioned box fan alternative under laptop, while laptop was propped up on both sides. AC on lowest temp behind laptop. Room is cold, chilly even.

Switched on. Set max processor state to 35%.

WINDOWS EXPLORER ERROR AGAIN
Downloaded Real Temp (apparently good for checking Intel temps). However when I tried to extract files, I got windows Explorer error again (windows Explorer has stopped working).

Downloaded Core Temp. The extraction occurs automatically as part of install process, which causes no probs.

TEMPERATURES
Anyway ran Core Temp. All temps (value, min, max) for both cores is 23 degrees Celsius.

Ran Hwmonitor again. All temps (value, min, max) for both cores is 18 degrees Celsius and the Toshiba temp is 24 degrees Celsius (all of which are lower than last time - see previous post). Hence the laptop is defn cooler than last time - so even if another component is overheating, a component not checked by Core Temp or Hwmonitor, chances are that the AC-fan contraption combined with reduced max processor state has reduced the temp of the overheating component by up to 6 degrees (from whatever it was). What I do not understand is why would only one component be so significantly higher in temperature so as to cause an overheating problem when the processor cores are so low in temperature? If there was a problem with the computer fan, wouldn't the cores be higher in temperature?

SUDDEN SHUTDOWN
When I went to clear cookies and cache for Web browser, laptop suddenly switched off. I don't know if it was going to switch off anyway at that time (due to overheating of suspect component) or whether clearing the cache caused this shutdown. While I haven't exactly been doing a diverse range of tasks on the laptop since this issue occurred, about 35-40% of the time the sudden shutdown has occurred when trying to clear the cookies and cache. This could simply be a timing coincidence OR there could be something more to this:
(a). Clearing cookies/cache is a more "intensive" task than browsing.
(b). Malware?

TIME BEFORE SHUTDOWN
It did stay on for 26 mins this time, which beats the previous high of 25 mins. Overheating defn strong possibility. BUT I wanted to repeat the test to be sure.

However as it was shutting down, it suddenly started installing windows updates (auto process). Postponed test 2 for today.

TEST 2 AND NEW PROBLEM
Unfortunately test 2 was NOT possible...

When I pressed the power button today, the switch lighted up and made a noise to switch on but then switched off immediately (literally before doing anything, within 1 second). This happened 3 times. On 4th and 5th attempts, it displayed the ACER screen then switched off before booting up (2 seconds before switch off).

This is practically what happened when this issue started - except 2 weeks ago it made absolutely no attempt to switch on. If you see my original post, when I finally got it to switch on when this issue first occurred, I managed to restore the system to a week prior to the issue, which was just before a "major" windows update. The fact that a windows update occurred last night and now the laptop won't switch on cannot be a coincidence, can it?

Trying to think about this logically and not go crazy:
Is this a possibility:
[b]Overheating causes sudden shutdowns ----> which causes file corruption -----> installing windows updates given corrupted file system, causes huge problem -----> laptop dies. BUT would it matter if the file system was corrupted, when installing windows updates? Would it depend on what the OS updates were for?
OR
Overheating causes sudden shutdowns -----> which
causes file corruption BUT this is nothing to do with computer packing up ----> while computer suddenly shutting down due to overheating, Windows update installation pushes it over edge so it packs up.

How can I get it to switch on again?

Sounds like you have a power supply problem of some kind. Could be the brick or it could be inside the laptop.

I'm thinking you could use a USB enclosure to extract all your data off your hard drive and then doing a full clean install (move to Windows 10 too while you're at it)... if your computer keeps dying while installing, then you definitively have some power management problems:
a) replace the Power Adapter and see if it works, if it doesn't...
b) that laptop does need a full service/maintenance to check if there is any power management problems, which may be 200+ USD, and not sure if you're willing to spend that much money...

Extract the hard drive. Throw away the laptop.

Buy a USB-SATA converter (cable type, enclosure type, or dock type) so you can retrieve your data.

Buy a new laptop. The old one is past its useful life expectancy anyway. Don't waste any more time/money on it. Heck, would a cheap Chromebook suffice?

DPete27 wrote:

Extract the hard drive. Throw away the laptop.

Yep. There's no point in continuing.

Ok, noted.

Never extracted data from a computer that won't switch on before. Never extracted hard drive from broken computer before. But will try this, hopefully should be fine.

One question though - given the corrupted files, should this be fixable if / when the data is moved to a new computer?

Demira wrote:

Ok, noted.

Never extracted data from a computer that won't switch on before. Never extracted hard drive from broken computer before. But will try this, hopefully should be fine.

One question though - given the corrupted files, should this be fixable if / when the data is moved to a new computer?

I highly doubt that your information should be corrupted (for the most part) - if anything, sounds like Windows itself got corrupted. Also, if your laptop was cheap, it should have an easy-to-access drive bay. Just unscrew a couple of screws and you'll see the hard drive, slap that into a sata-to-usb enclosure and after this, you can plug it into any Windows you want. Should be as straightforward as plugging a thumb drive!

If you really want to recover corrupted data, that will cost you quite a bit, and given this whole exercise, I don't think you're willing to spend that much money

Also, what's your exact laptop model number? I could only find a reference online to an Acer Aspire Timeline 1810TZ (http://tim.id.au/laptops/acer/aspire%201810t%201410.pdf - Chapters:'Removing the Hard Disk Drive Module' and 'Replacing the Hard Drive')

While some of your problems are indeed a result of a corruption in the file system, I'm not confident that installing a new hard drive will alleviate all your problems. And it's certainly not worth the hassle considering you can buy a better laptop for about £300

DPete27 wrote:

While some of your problems are indeed a result of a corruption in the file system, I'm not confident that installing a new hard drive will alleviate all your problems. And it's certainly not worth the hassle considering you can buy a better laptop for about £300

No, I don't want to replace the hard drive on the laptop. I was talking abt getting the data off the broken laptop and transferring that to a new machine.

Regarding the laptop, given what has been happening with it for the past 2 weeks, especially the past 2 days, it's clear that there is a major and expensive problem with the laptop (I suspect the power supply unit). I was initially hoping, based on the replies from you people, that it was going to be a simple issue of the fan being clogged - so I could just call a repair person to inspect and clean the fan for me, after that I could just run a fix on the corrupted files and everything would be okay. That is not to say that overheating played no part in all this - it may have done at some point. To be honest, there really was absolutely no problem with the laptop or even a tiny hint of a problem 6 weeks ago. I think overheating during the heatwave caused a problem which then caused another problem and so on, finally causing the laptop to collapse miserably like a house of cards.

The focus now is on getting the data off the machine.

qmacpoint wrote:

I highly doubt that your information should be corrupted (for the most part) - if anything, sounds like Windows itself got corrupted. Also, if your laptop was cheap, it should have an easy-to-access drive bay. Just unscrew a couple of screws and you'll see the hard drive, slap that into a sata-to-usb enclosure and after this, you can plug it into any Windows you want. Should be as straightforward as plugging a thumb drive!

You're kidding - it can't be as easy as using a data key/usb key!! Seriously though I've just always backed up onto high storage data keys / USB keys and never even backed up onto an external hard drive.

qmacpoint wrote:

If you really want to recover corrupted data, that will cost you quite a bit, and given this whole exercise, I don't think you're willing to spend that much money

I'm really hoping the files are not corrupted. Honestly, I just don't know how much I'm willing to spend to get the data (if it's corrupted). So far I've spent about 20 hours over the past 2 weeks trying to figure out what is going on with the laptop. That may be nothing compared to how long it would take to re-create some of my info.

I meant that once you have your drive in a USB enclosure, it will be as easy as a thumb drive, you need to do some unscrewing before you get to that point!

qmacpoint wrote:

I meant that once you have your drive in a USB enclosure, it will be as easy as a thumb drive, you need to do some unscrewing before you get to that point!

I got that. I just assumed the process as a whole would be much more complicated, esp given the dead nature of the laptop.

Demira wrote:

I got that. I just assumed the process as a whole would be much more complicated, esp given the dead nature of the laptop.

You can't really know how difficult it will be until you try. Once the drive is connected to another computer, run chkdsk [drivename:] /f /v /x, then look at the data in which you're interested.

Yan wrote:

You can't really know how difficult it will be until you try. Once the drive is connected to another computer, run chkdsk [drivename:] /f /v /x, then look at the data in which you're interested.

That's the plan. Just really really really dreading the results. Which is probably why I'm putting this off.
Hopefully if any corrupted data is fixable it should be okay. Im dreading the fact that the whole disk is corrupt and/or important files are not fixable, in which case I have absolutely no idea what the course of action would be.

Demira wrote:

Im dreading the fact that the whole disk is corrupt and/or important files are not fixable, in which case I have absolutely no idea what the course of action would be.

If the whole disk was corrupt, you wouldn't be able to get the computer to work for 25 minutes and run various programmes, so I wouldn't be worried about that.

The real question is whether the files you consider important are corrupt, and there's no way to know in advance.

Yan wrote:

If the whole disk was corrupt, you wouldn't be able to get the computer to work for 25 minutes and run various programmes, so I wouldn't be worried about that.

The real question is whether the files you consider important are corrupt, and there's no way to know in advance.

Maybe the whole disk wasn't corrupt 2 days ago when it actually switched on. Right now, given it doesn't switch on at all, I don't know. Hopefully it's only a few files and hopefully none of them are important.

The reason we've been suggesting extraction of the hard drive is to eliminate the hardware-related issues (ie overheating/etc) coming from the laptop itself. That gives you the best chance at recovering your data because even if the file system that's being accessed by Windows to run the OS is corrupted, that doesn't necessarily compromise access to your documents/pictures/etc when hooked up as an external drive.

Demira wrote:

Maybe the whole disk wasn't corrupt 2 days ago when it actually switched on. Right now, given it doesn't switch on at all, I don't know.

If your disk was completely corrupt (for example, there's no data on the hard disk at all), you would still see the BIOS screen (the Acer screen), and then the computer would hang, but not shut down. The fact that your computer shuts down indicates a problem other than disk corruption. That's why the consensus seems to be that the hardware is hopelessly broken.

I've seen no mention of trying to run a Memtest. I would recommend running Memtest86+ [memtest . org since I can't post links] (for this laptop, newer laptops Memtest86) as it monitors and displays CPU temps while running a constant load. It also has the side benefit in this case of checking for bad RAM.

Memtest won't find much if the computer wont stay on in the BIOS for more than 20 minutes.

DPete27 wrote:

Memtest won't find much if the computer wont stay on in the BIOS for more than 20 minutes.

monitors and displays CPU temps while running a constant load

It probably won't help, but that would be my reasoning behind trying it to rule out or in a temp issue.

Your logic is sound. Whenever I see system crashes, my first suspect is RAM. And by staying out of the OS, you're eliminating any hard drive corruption from the equation. In this situation though, it sounds like the laptop wont stay on long enough, even under these "perfect" conditions, for Memtest to complete more than a couple passes at best, so it's doubtful that the test would produce any results in such a short period of time.
Also, the fact that it's crashing while sitting in the BIOS tells me that RAM isn't the problem either. AFAIK, the BIOS itself doesn't actually access system RAM (aside from displaying how much is installed and at what freq/timings).

***On second glance, I can't find any posts from the OP explicitly stating that he/she has let the machine sit while in BIOS to see how long it stays on. I could've sworn that was stated somewhere, but I must have confused one of the "crashes before entering OS" as such. In fact, "crashes before entering OS" could still be a result of an access to a bad memory sector while trying to load the OS, but it seems fishy that it doesn't happen more frequently (and possibly rarely on a cold boot).

@OP - Have you tried turning the machine back on immediately after it crashes (hot boot) from one of the >10 minute runs? If so, does it crash faster in round 2 in a repeatable manner?

DPete27 wrote:

Your logic is sound. Whenever I see system crashes, my first suspect is RAM.

The system isn't crashing, though, but shutting down -- at least that's what I think the OP is saying.

Yan wrote:

DPete27 wrote:

Your logic is sound. Whenever I see system crashes, my first suspect is RAM.

The system isn't crashing, though, but shutting down -- at least that's what I think the OP is saying.

I think Demira (OP) meant that it powers off rather than doing a graceful shutdown, otherwise there wouldn't be any Windows corruption, right? Hopefully he can clarify that to us all!

Thank you all for all your replies and suggestions.

I haven't checked back because I've been busy with tonnes and have not tried anything else re laptop these last few days. I have not properly read the posts since my last post - will do this tomorrow - just wanted to post a quick update now.

Re the latest status: basically on Monday, it just wouldn't switch on at all i.e. I press the power button, the power button lights up and laptop makes a tiny sound, then it dies, all of which takes about 1 second. I tried switching it on about 10 times. Most of the time the above happened. A few times I managed to get the Acer screen but then it switched off (all of which took about 2 seconds). I tried to get it running in safe mode but didn't work so gave up - around the time everyone was telling me to throw it away...

I did return to it Monday night (I think). This time it gave me the option to run startup repair which I selected - it actually ran repair for about 8 mins before it died again. I haven't returned to it since.

Re my prior references to the laptop shutting down - I actually meant 2 things depending on when /how it happened - apologies for not making this clearer earlier but there was so much detail already and I didn't want to make all of you read an essay:
(1). In one case (when it was actually running OS for a bit) it suddenly told me it was going to shutdown i.e. you know when you have a task running but you go to shutdown and the system tells you that there is still a task running and you can force it to end? Well that's the message I got, except I NEVER told it to shutdown AND the shutdown didn't happen the normal way (it just sort of switches off a couple of secs after displaying that message).
(2). The other case is that it literally just switches off - this mostly happened when it couldn't even get windows running.