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Posted by Barry Watzman on March 18, 2008, 8:39 pm
Please log in for more thread options Not an issue; the laptop will shut down if it over heats. In fact, the
heat sinks and fans often become clogged with dust and overheating and
spontaneous shut downs is one of the most common problems that laptop
service technicians see.
Steven M. Haflich wrote:
> A question for the collected wisdom:
>
> Modern laptops have ability to schedule a boot from power off when some
> time is reached on the internal clock chip. This has obvious uses, but
> in a laptop it has hazards that are almost as obvious.
>
> When a laptop is on AC power, there is probably little harm if it boots
> while unattended. But a laptop in a backpack sleeve, or stored away in
> an unventilated drawer, may have its ventilation powers entirely
> blocked. For a machine to boot and run under such circumstances is
> clearly hazardous to the machine, and under some circumstances may
> constitute a physical fire hazard.
>
> I have experimentally verified that Windows Media Center (for example)
> will boot a machine if it has a recording scheduled. This application
> might be particularly dangerous, since it runs a machine fairly hot with
> disk and processor activity. Windows Update has also been implicated as
> starting an unpowered machine to check for updates, even if it is not
> permitted to install automatically.
>
> I generally leave my machine in hibernate, and twice in the past six
> months I have discovered it repowered. Once it was in a backpack, and
> once when stored away in a drawer. Now, I have the on-battery power
> settings to place the machine in standby fairly soon, so the machine was
> in standby and after entering standby was not generating large amounts
> of heat. But a colleage similarly had his machine turn on in a
> backpack, and he apparently did not have the machine configured to
> standby. He claimed it was almost too hot to touch.
>
> These machines are of different manufacture, and one was XP and the
> other Vista. So the problem is generic, and not necessarily even
> specific to Microsoft. The problem is that a boot might be scheduled
> with the OS by a large number of applications. It is hard to be sure
> one has discovered and controlled them all. Trashing a machine, burning
> down a house, or firing airplane seems a serious price to pay for
> missing a setting. I now remove the battery when storing the machine.
>
> In my opinion, the motherboard should never boot a machine when on
> battery powered without some definite confirmation in advance (at power
> down?) that this is desired. I've reported the hazard issue to the
> laptop manufacturer and am waiting for definitive response. meanwhile,
> does anyone have any thoughts or anecdotes to share?
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