Good laptops have gotten very cheap. Look at the ads, and go somewhere to get a replacement machine

Remove the hard drive and memory and give those areas a blast as well.

Also run a disk utilitie like CCleaner and Defraggler. If you are running a 64bit OS, see if you can increase the RAM to at least 4GB.

Increasing RAM can help a lot. For instance, if you use the Chrome browser, each tab, window eats a lot of working memory. Once you hit the limit of working memory (RAM), your computer will begin to write to the hard drive to compensate. A constantly spinning hard drive will add to the heat. So will dust buildup.

so it's not doing 7 times the work to accomplish the same things.

What might be happening is that there's a big buildup of dust inside the machine, causing it to overheat. That's the simplest problem to fix, just open the case and use canned air to blow all the woofies out of it. Do it outdoors unless you want dust balls all over everything. While it's open, plug it in and turn it on to make sure both fans are operating.

I tend not to replace things until they are inoperable, preferably accompanied by a curl of smoke coming out of the case.

Canned air is one of my favorite maintenance tools.

So, no, I have not done CCleaner or defrag. The machine is working fine as far as I know.

"open the case" might be within my level of competence.

So, "inoperable" is the criterion for replacement, eh? I've thought that whenever I think I'm going to replace it, I'll use a free trial of something to put what I've got in the cloud, then download into the new machine. Is that a good plan?

I had noticed my seven yo laptop doing such things since the hack and I started doing the disc cleanup evey time I close the browser. It's amazing how much stuff follows you home from the intertubes. I not only do the initial cleanup but I rerun it with the system cleanup too, there's a pile of crap in there. Now, the only time it does that is when some huge thing is trying to manipulate my device or when it is conducting the cleanup search.

I have to do some air pressure treatment now that everyone's mentioned it and a twinge of guilt sets in...

ones to delete. At some point that feature (choosing individual cookies to delete) is no long available in Edge, only Delete All.

I'll be looking up "disc cleanup" and finding out how to open up the case.

different OS? I have Win7, it's been good to me even though I hate Microsoft for a number of reasons, and for a long time. Someone bought this as a gift and it has served me well, for which I am grateful.

I long for a different OS but am too scared to change what exists for fear of trashing the unit. I'll need a more knowledgeable friend to accompany me on my next purchase... right about the time this one gets ready to die.

I liked Windows 7 more than whatever. As for Microsoft, it's all I've ever had, don't know enough to know anything better. Since all I do is DU, a few news websites, and e-mail, I've never noticed needing anything more.

(when) "this one gets ready to die" - yeah, that's what I'd like to know, what to look out for to see it coming!1

You just never can tell. It happens so fast that whenever something important is created or saved, back it up on an external something. If it matters, it's worth the extra couple minutes to preserve it. I have had a couple devices self-destruct, it isn't a good feeling when you realize what just happened... and the instant mental inventory of what you just lost because you didn't save it elsewhere.

It's a crappy feeling to know that you have to go buy a new one but to know you have no access to important stuff is painful and brain-damaging. Especially if your thesis is on that Zip-drive! And "the clowd" is against my religion.

I make my laptops last as long as I can so I try not to take them anywhere with a good neoprene sleeve and sometimes I remember to dust them. I grew up in a time when teachers would make sure you washed you hands before opening a book and it was akin to sacrilegious if you wrote in one. I can discipline myself to not eat at my computer or set on anything but a dust-free table, they sure last a long time if you take care of them.

If you look in my computer or control panel wherever they are in 10, you should be able to find some cleanup tools and they will help you computer run faster too. Those news sites have things that follow you home, even DU has them, and I have two tracking filters running. If you don't have those, there's a whole bunch of stuff to get rid of.

Good luck

The machine powered itself off. I'll see what the morning brings, see if I can air blow it out. I hope I can save my stuff.

If it is powering itself off it is most likely overheating. You could replace the fan but... it is seven years old. Call around and see what someone will charge you to replace it and compare it to the cost of a new machine and weigh your options.

That might explain the humming/buzzing--and maybe even the powering off. It may need a good blow-out w/ compressed air when you do your cleaning. They're not too difficult to replace, so that might give you an extension of life on it. But I would give you one other word of advice, to be used henceforward:

********* [font size=6]BACK-UP[/font size] *********

Religiously. (even if you're an atheist!) Especially things like address books (he says from painful experience). Just. In. Case.

Make sure some task isn't constantly hogging 50-99% of CPU time (CPU usage = heat, and anything that uses more than a few % should be something you KNOW should, like a video running, transcoding video files, etc) ... so high CPU plus a really dirty ventilation system inside can cause overheating ... (high cpu usage might be a virus even)

A PC just up and shutting off (unless the battery dies) is like 90% of the time a sign of overheating, which is nearly always a maintenance issue (esp. if the fan is actually running meaning it's not dead ... that can a big problem w/old lappies in some cases as they could be proprietary/hard to replace).

Do you know ANY comp nerds? Kid? Nephew? SOMEONE to help? Cause these symptoms don't remind of 'dying' laptop.

If you can get it running again make sure to back up first thing. Then shut down, take out screws, open up back, blow w/canned air, when you restart, check task manager for zombie processes hogging tons of CPU time. Kill them. Does the fan slow down after a bit? Then you've found the culprit. Many laptops aren't REALLY designed to run the CPU flat-out, long periods of time.

Also get a hardware monitor app like HWInfo64 (its clean, safe, trusted by nerds the world over) and install and run it so you can see temps on CPU, mobo, etc. Any temps approaching 75C or above are likely causes for sudden shutdown.

After the sudden shutdown, after cooling down, were you able to restart, or no?

Will be doing your plan this morning. Am typing this on phone. Thnx

And in this half hour the fan has not turned on. I frenetically SAVED the couple of most important documents into a flash drive, which is at least a big relief about those. I'll be proceeding to stretch my Low Tech skills to open the case and do some blowing out, so I'll be gone for the duration.

While I'm here, what do you all think about using the free trial of Carbonite while all this gets worked out. Or what other cloud product is your suggestion? My stuff is very basic as I said in the o.p., mainly some documents and pictures.

Thanks to all of you for taking an interest and for your information, which is very valuable to me.

Yes, everything was a nerve wracking Manhattan Project thing for me - unscrewing the bottom cover (I wasn't expecting the slotted latches after the screws).

And what was in there? Yes, there was a NOTICEABLE amount of little caked on dust especially on the blades of the fans, plus some stray bigger motes around the different hardware parts. There was NOT the humongous amount like needing to take outside to blow out. I had no idea what the insides looked like and that the fans' blades were (rubber?). I had everything on hand (tiny screwdriver; can of air) never before used. Anyway, the canned airing blew the loose dust but left some of the crusted on stuff. I used a Q-tip to do a little but not much.

Now, in the first powering on, the machine seemed to ZIP on and load up a lot faster than I've been used to.

*********As for everything before this, I saved my few really important files onto a flash drive and downloaded the Carbonite free trial, which took about 20 minutes to do the backup (the instructions said the first time might take days). There were only 6,000 files, which tells you how little stuff I've got.

And I looked into Task Manager and all of the things listed were at 0% useage, with the only 30% being the anti-virus software.

Anyway, it looks like I might be putting off replacing the machine for now. But also looks like I might as well be surrendering to another yearly expense along the lines of the anti-virus, now Carbonite?

Thanks to everybody. Don't tell Lounge I've been flirting with this Group!1