[alineinasong]

Alright so I have an HP Pavillion ZV 5000 Laptop with a pentium 4 processor and 1 GB ram. I've had it for over a year and a half and it was working fine. This summer, one of my friends was playing the sims 2 on it and it randomly shut down. No big deal and it didn't happen again until recently when I was watching video online through windows media player.

Now, whenever I watch a video or play a game on the web (from shockwave.com or youtube.com or even watching streaming video in windows media player) my comp would shut down. I recently checked the taskmanager and found out that whenever I'm doing any of these things, the CPU spikes to 100% and stays there, which obviously isn't good for the computer. It isn't limited to a browser either, the problem occurs both in IE and in Firefox. The problem does not happen when I'm watching a DVD on my computer.

Before, I would have no problem running Adobe Photoshop, the SIMS, and AIM but now I can hardly do anything without fearing that its going to overheat and shut down. I was running Itunes and Photoshop (which I used to do very often without a problem) and again, the CPU spiked to 100% and stayed there for several minutes until I shut down Itunes.

One of my friends said getting it cleaned should help, but it really shouldn't be spiking to 100% and staying there if all I'm doing is watching a video. And I never had that kind of problem with it before. I also noticed when I was playing a game that it started out at 25% but as time wore on it started to get higher and higher so eventually I just closed out of it.

Any suggestions/help are greatly appreciated!

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Check the ventilation slots are clear of fluff and debris. You can safely hold a vacuum-cleaner nozzle against them for a few secs to make sure they are clear (with the laptop unplugged and switched off -- stay safe). If no improvement, the internal fan and surrounding area could be clogged with fluff and debris as there is much less room to accomodate dust inside a laptop compared to a tower, consequently a small build-up can affect cooling drastically.
But I would advise against poking around inside even with it unplugged -- you may dislodge some vital component and be unable to fix it. professional laptop servicing is advised for anything other than a disk or memory replacement, especially if it's your main or only means of computing.

Edited by pip22, 12 November 2006 - 02:23 PM.

[pip22]

Check the ventilation slots are clear of fluff and debris. You can safely hold a vacuum-cleaner nozzle against them for a few secs to make sure they are clear (with the laptop unplugged and switched off -- stay safe). If no improvement, the internal fan and surrounding area could be clogged with fluff and debris as there is much less room to accomodate dust inside a laptop compared to a tower, consequently a small build-up can affect cooling drastically.
But I would advise against poking around inside even with it unplugged -- you may dislodge some vital component and be unable to fix it. professional laptop servicing is advised for anything other than a disk or memory replacement, especially if it's your main or only means of computing.

Edited by pip22, 12 November 2006 - 02:23 PM.