Dateiliste

When a laptop switches itself off during the installation of Windows, this can have temperature reasons.

I know it almost sounds like a joke, but it worked on a Medion laptop.

The laptop worked perfectly with Windows XP Home Edition and was in permanent use without issues. The task was to install Windows XP Professional to get it in an Active Directory domain.

The installation started nicely with loading all drivers, but when it was time to accept the Microsoft license, the laptop turned itself off. There was no problem turning it back on again, but as soon as the XP installation reached a particular stage the same happened again. Power off and silence.

Sometimes, the installation process would go a little bit further than the license page, but it was not possible to remove the XP Home partition. Just before that it swiched off again.

The solution was as simple as holding a hair dryer, which had a 'cold air' button, towards the keyboard to keep the laptop's temperature low. We had to use some tape to keep the 'cold air' button pressed all the time.

The only explanation I have for this is that during the Windows installation the CD, the hard drive, and the CPU are in continuous operation and increase the laptop's temperature up to the threshold where it switches itself off.

It should probably also be noted that we put the laptop on a grid to improve the air circulation, and to get an even better cooling from the bottom we squeezed a pack of frozen fish fingers between the grid and the laptop, which unfortunately is not visible in the pictures. You can however see the tape we had to wrap around the dryer to keep the 'cold air' button pressed.

Again, no, this is and was not a joke!

Update 2008-08-24: Rumours have been spread that the fish fingers were fried after the Windows installation completed. These rumours can be confirmed as being untrue, although the top of the fish fingers box was free of ice after removal.