Surprise! Surprise! Can you help yet again with a computer problem?

Battery going bad, maybe?

If it isn’t the battery or anything going wonky then I’d say that you should make sure that you are keeping all the fans clear and not blocking them when you sit it on your lap.

Technically they are all called notebook computers now because they they get too hot on peoples laps.

the paste between the CPU and the heat sink is dried up (almost certain, mine had the same problem) get new paste, open the lap top, clean both the cpu and the heat sink from remnant paste, and apply a new thin layer of paste.

How old is the laptop, first of all, and second… When is the last time you took a nice can of compressed air and blew it out? If you’re nervous about taking the bottom hatch off of your laptop… I would suggest that you don’t (even though it’s harmless to do so [but some people are uncomfortable with it]). But if you are comfortable doing so, go ahead and unscrew whatever screws are holding it in place and blow it out. Most likely your fan is just incredibly dusty. You’d be surprised at the amount of grunge that gets inside there.

@ragingloli: Hardly almost certain, although it is indeed a possibility. It’d be better to try less invasive methods of cleaning up the internal components before that.

at the very least you need to get a cooling pad to set the laptop on.. they have all sort available with fans built into them.. usb powered or otherwise…

You also need to think about the ambient temperature in the room.. a hot room is no good

You should also think about getting the laptop cleaned. If you have had it for any length of time it probably has a lot of debris etc built up inside it… a good cleaning will help

@Jerikao If it gets so hot that it shuts down to prevent damage from overheating, then I think a dried up paste is the most likely cause. It may be compounded by clogged up fans though, yes.

I agree with @ragingloli. I find this to be the problem in most cases. I would open it up and take a look. If the paste is gone, just go buy some new one and put it on.

@Owl It is a possibility my battery usually last for only about an hour when it is not plugged up. This would cause overheating?

@LeotCol This might also be a possibility I usually always have my laptop notebook on my lap.

@ragingloli What is this paste you speak of? The only paste I know is elmer’s glue and I have a feeling this is not what your talking about.

@Jerikao I took my battery out last night and blew it out. Are you talking about the whole bottom piece of my computer.

@NaturalMineralWater I have seen those and thought about buying them, but did not know how well they worked. Have you used one personally and where can you get it cleaned at?

@ragingloli: Not that long ago my Acer started doing that. It was able to run for several hours before shutting down though, which is why I assumed it was the fan first. Because it would overheat much faster if it were the heatsink. Your idea may easily be the right one though, in this situation.

@sjmc1989: Yes, I am. And in order to do what either ragingloli or I are talking about, you’d have to be able to do that.

@sjmc1989 – Thermal Paste. Go to compusa, or best buy. Tell them that and find the cheapest one. :P

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_grease

Oh yes and if you did not see I edited my question. If anyone knows about the icons please tell me those damn little things are driving me crazy!

That… Is most likely an unrelated issue. Anyone think explorer.exe is crashing? That may also be causing the reboot, occasionally.

Hm, the edit is a bit different from the rest of the question….

Which exact icons is it that are dissapearing?

About the Icons, I don’t know. When does it happen, how does it happen, does the task bar disappear too, what are you doing when or before it happens, etc., what programmes are running. All that we need to know.

I know I apologize for it being unrelated, but I didn’t want to do another question just for that. My task bar is still there, but it doesn’t have my battery icon, my connection and network icon are all gone. Basically the only one showing up is my antivirus icon. They will be there and as soon as I shut my computer down and turn it back on it disappears again.

Also, just as a point of curiosity, what version of Windows are you running?

@Jerikao Ok I am an intelligent person. That being said, how do you find that out?

@sjmc1989 What does it say when you boot up? Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 2000… God forbid, Windows ME?

Your cooling system (i.e. fan) might not be functioning. Can you hear the fan? Is air blowing out as it normally does? If the heat rejection system does not work, you could end up with a fried hard drive, or worse a fried motherboard.

@Jerikao Ok that took some effort, but I have Windows 7.

@lilikoi Yes the fan is working, right before it shuts down it gets extremely loud.

If it is win7 than it might be normal as windows may only show notifications for the functions the icons represent and hide them when nothing special is happening.

@sjmc1989 The cooling pad I got was cheap and lowered the core termp down significantly .. as far as cleaning .. well I did that myself.