Our company uses several HP 2510p laptops. These have, so far, been very nice machines with a small footprint. Only a few of us actually use docking stations with them. Over the last few weeks, my laptop has suddenly rebooted without warning. In addition, I've noticed that the right side of the laptop and especially the bottom of the right side have gotten extremely hot during the day. I have a small thermometer setting right next to the vent and it has gone up to at least 82 recently. So I'm sure the internal temperature is even higher.
Once I turned the laptop on while looking at the fan and it did no spin. I tapped it a few times and it eventually took off. I mentioned all of this to HP support and their suggestion was to replace the heat sink / CPU fan. I'm very familiar with the insides of these machines so I had them send me the part and I did it myself. I've only been running on the new part for a few days now. I've not had any more sudden reboots (yet) but the heat is still an issue.
I thought it might be related to running too many external hardware devices. I've got an external monitor and two USB2DVI adapters running for a total of 3 external screens. It seems like the reboots would happen when I had a video playing in a web browser on the external screens. So I took another 2510p I was working on (hard drive problems) and put it in a dock on my desk as well. It's been doing a CHKDSK on the C: drive for several hours and it is running extremely hot in the same places. I undocked it and the cooling fan is not even running.
I tried spinning it with a pin but it did not start. I checked the connection on the bottom by the hard drive and it appears to be securely connected. So my question has two parts.
1. Does the CPU fan require Windows to be fully booted to run? I know there is an option in the BIOS to have the fan always on while running on A/C power but I don't have that turned on right now. Once this CHKDSK finishes I will shutdown and boot back into Windows to see if the fan starts back up.
2. Has anyone else noticed heat issues with this model? I take mine home every night but without the dock of course. I have noticed that it does seem to get a little warm but not nearly as bad as when I'm in the office. I don't expect HP to be able to help me much more because I'm starting to think this is a design issue and not a malfunction. I have one other 2510p user that I just setup with a dock today so I will also be monitoring that laptop to see if it too has heat issues.
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