Can I save my laptop?

[Ecky]

Originally Posted by serialk11r

It's under warranty, insist that they fix it (I'm assuming you already checked it's not caked with dust).

On a somewhat related note, I have a strong suspicion high operating temperatures makes laptops inherently less reliable than desktops. My Thinkpad X220 became practically unusable at year 6 with the CPU fan always on maximum and the simplest tasks taking forever. I've seen this happen to all kinds of notebooks, but much faster to cheapo ones and refurbished laptops, while my desktop machine ran without a hitch for many years on the same motherboard and CPU.

I typically find computers get "slow" when they have a silent hard drive failure. For whatever reason, seek times get outrageous. Hard drive usage shows very high in task manager even though throughput is low.

Since you're seeing the CPU fan maxed, it might just be thermally throttling because the heatsink is packed with dust and hair. Either way, this are fixable issues.

[serialk11r]

Originally Posted by Ecky

I typically find computers get "slow" when they have a silent hard drive failure. For whatever reason, seek times get outrageous. Hard drive usage shows very high in task manager even though throughput is low.

Since you're seeing the CPU fan maxed, it might just be thermally throttling because the heatsink is packed with dust and hair. Either way, this are fixable issues.

I have had an Intel X25M SSD in there for most of its life though, I thought those don't die silently? It's not anywhere near full and I never wrote much stuff to it, so garbage collection and wear leveling shouldn't be the problem. I don't think the CPU would consume large amounts of power if it's just waiting on the hard drive.

I also did clean out the fan. The older Thinkpads had 35W TDP processors and big heavy heatsinks compared to today's low voltage wimpy offerings. I don't really understand the obsession with thinness, it makes thermal management much more difficult, while not really providing any tangible benefit.

[deluxx]

You are in a really hot room using that, I looked the model up online, and noticed a Nvidia GPU sticker... A high powered GPU (big heat) in a laptop (no cooling) running for work (high load, long run times) in a 100F room.... (high stress) I think the CPU would throttle down to low power mode at 150F/65C, only 50 degrees headroom... I think you should return it ASAP if its not to late, you ran that thing hard for the time you had it. yeah.. abuse that warranty... buy a desktop with big fans or a Toughbook

[deluxx]

Laptop in Question
Intel® Core™ i7-7700HQ Processor
6M Cache, up to 3.80 GHz
has a 45W TDP low power mode is 35W TDP (I will bet it runs at 30W unless you are outside in the cold)
looking it up more... damn $1500!! You could buy a Civic for that!!!


**** The Y520 had cooling problems ****

[Stubby79]

Grab your personal files and do a full windows restore.

Or don’t grab your files and do a windows restore while keeping your personal files.

If it’s still doing it after, then you might have a hardware/heat issue. I personally doubt it though.

[ksa8907]

Before anything else, if it's an hdd replace with ssd. 2.5" hdd's have terrible lifespans, also much less ability to shed heat in a laptop.

While replacing, blow the laptop out with air.

[Xist]

It came with a Samsung 256 GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD.

[serialk11r]

Originally Posted by Xist

It came with a Samsung 256 GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD.

You know the funny thing is I had a Samsung 960 EVO in my current laptop...it died spontaneously at year 2 and lost a bunch of my stuff :/

[Xist]

Hilarious?

I checked everything that you guys suggested short of taking apart my laptop or reinstalling windows. Four drivers have errors that I was unable to fix. I was about to restore windows when I realized that I had not saved my passwords. I guess that I could have exported them from my desktop, but I rebooted just for the passwords.

It looks like my 8 GB flash drive had the windows memory test and a password resetter. The 32 GB only showed up as 240 MB and had Memory Test 86 and Windows Diagnostics. There was a setting there for restoring Windows, but I repartitioned and reformatted it in order to back up my files. There wasn't enough room, so I tried to compress them, but then my hard drive started running out of space.

If I need a new hard drive I would like a larger one, but I am confident that I could clear out gigabytes.

The extended warranty would just give me another 256 GB one.

It looks like the external SATA connector that I had been using died, but I had another. The second hard drive seemed to work, so I started copying things over, paused it, set up in my office to see a client, and then copied the rest during the session.

[Ecky]

What do you mean by "Four drivers have errors that I was unable to fix" ?