Laptop auto shuts down every 30 mins but was solved when I used an external monitor. Can somebody explain this?

[sf300111]

I have a laptop that was constantly shutting every 15 to 30 mins.Longest 45 mins tops. It drove me crazy because I needed to finish my assignment. I tried a few tips provided here on tom's guide but nothing seems to work. A friend asked me to use an external monitor (Acer monitor) and see if I still have this problem. It stopped auto shutting down. When I asked him how did it fixed this issue, he said he forgotten about it when a tech guy solved it for him.

My question to you all is how did this method solved the auto shutdown issue? Was there something wrong with the monitor or were there other factors involved? Thanks

 

[webworkings]

If it isn't shutting down when running on an external monitor then it sounds like a GPU overheating issue.

 

[4745454b]

The GPU would still be working to display on the external monitor so it's not that. My guess would be a dying bulb in the laptop? Or something dying/overheating in the built in display?

 

[danchappers]

Could this be a short or something to the built in display?

 

[webworkings]

If the attached display and the external are using different things for viewing, it still could be the GPU. If say the external uses the Intel and attached is using say Nvidia (just as an example) then it could actually be the GPU. The only way to know though would be to run some tests to see what the temps are.