Old Laptop - Shutting down issues

Magically

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Oct 18, 2014
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4,510
I am having a little bit of trouble,
I have an old Dell Studio here which currently has Windows 7 installed on it. I have opened it up in the past and looked at the components inside for the fun and cleared the dust out of the fan.

Currently I managed to install Ubuntu onto it, how ever I have an issue. The laptop randomly shuts down when I am using it for example, browsing the internet or doing something else. How ever the computer doesn't crash when it is idle. I can have it sitting idle without any issues. Please note I was also having this issue when Windows 7 was still installed. How ever it shut down as soon as it got to the log on screen.

Is it possible that I could have damaged or nudged something inside the machine which causes it to shut down when I use it? I did take the internal hard drive out to take out a bit of dust under neath it. How ever I did so carefully.

I am running it on direct power and not on the battery since the battery died a long time ago.

Current suggestions from people on other forums etc:
Re-partion the hard-drive and re-install Ubuntu.

Thanks so much to who ever helps me fix it, would be pretty cool to have this laptop running Ubuntu for family use.