Laptop heats up and freezes at bootup

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

I have an acer extensa 391c P133 laptop which performed
flawlessly for many years. About a month ago, while
I was in the middle of a direct cable transfer
between this laptop and my desktop (which I had done for
years), the laptop suddenly crashed. The computer has
stopped functioning normally since. The PC generally just
freezes up after a short time in the boot up process...
both with Win95/98, MS-DOS and Linux; both booting from the
hard drive, bootup floppies and CD-ROM drive.

Now I have learned (through trial) that if I allow it to
cool down, or even better, place it on a cold metal support
and let it cool down, and also use a non-window OS such
as DOS, I can make it last a lot longer... up to 10-15
minutes.
So apparently the problem is that it heats up and then
it stops functioning.

I would exclude a battery problem, because this behavior
happens both when it is powered by the battery alone and
when I use the external plug-in power supply with no
battery in. Also not a faulty RAM problem, since I tried
switching around simms and even tried with a new sodimm
at the local store, with the same results.

The computer does not have a CPU cooling fan, so that's out
of the question as well.

I know that if something got "fried" during that last parallel
cable transfer a month ago, there is little that can be done...
But perhaps the problem is of a different nature and can
be fixed. Does anyone here have an idea of what the problem
could be and how I could fix it?

Thank you,
Nicole



Thanks,
Nicole