Tecra M2 - hard shutdown on high CPU (turns off with no BSOD)

Question

Have been experiencing consistent shutdowns when CPU runs at full for a little while.
- by "shutdowns" I mean complete power cut with no blue screen of death where all is lost and the computer has to be manually restarted.
- by "high CPU" I mean when the processor locks at full usage such as when you insert a column into a large Excel sheet with errors or when you are RARing a large number of files and you open a video from the network or when you run a virus scan and registry scan at the same time.
The problem has been occurring regularly for a couple of months and I can now manufacture an occurrence with high predictability. Using the hardware monitor suite 'Everest', it seems the problem happens when the CPU temperature sits at 99 for more than a minute or so.
It happen with some but never when running from batteries - during attempts to force the error, it will not shutdown if the power cable is pulled out just before the crash point.
In many instances of the problem, there seems to be a small error message which pops up only a fraction of a second before the computer dies.
Every forum and help reference I read would suggest the problem is hardware related and that the chip or motherboard is overheating and in need of replacement. While the laptop is nearly 18 months old, I bought a new "everything but the screen and HDD" early this year and was not prepared to accept the explanation without more testing.
Kantonix Linux works fine and the boot from CD seems to tax the processor as much as the same events that are killing it for me under XP.
A few weeks back, I installed the WinXP on a second HDD in the hotswappable bay and noted the installation seems to run the computer pretty hot and it did not die during the process. No problems were experienced for while but, a few days after moving the reinstalled HDD into the primary position and having reinstalled many many applications, the error started happening again.
Last night I caught it just fractions of a second before death, pulling the power and stopping the process and allowing me to see the error message (as referred above) properly:
- first message was from "TOSHIBA Power Saver" saying "A fatal errorn has occurred x06" (not sure on the last bit)
- second message was from "THotkey.exe" saying "Cannot load powrprof.dll"
- many hundreds of instances of the second message followed.
Due to error messages, I wasn't able to get a screen print.
Any solutions or even ideas about such would be very much appreciated!
Message was edited by: DC-Financial

Answer 1

Hello Markus, thank you for your suggestion and apologies for the lateness of this reply (thought I was supposed to receive email notification (?!?)).
I agree with your initial assessment "sounds like software related issue" and I would hate to think it is hardware - am die hard Toshiba man! (onto my 5th in as many years) .
Anywho, I have been through all the power saver options, as well as the CPU options under the Toshiba HWSetup: the system crashes under all situations if properly encouraged.
NB: Per my understanding, one shouldn't be able to crash a Pentium M, operating within the acceptable environmental conditions and I am working in a room between 16 & 20 degrees.
It is much more difficult to crash when it has been off for a while (ie. when it is cooler) and is more difficult to crash when on batteries as opposed to AC. Tried switching the RAM during the week and after mistakenly thinking it was all fixed, the problem resurfaced again. While I had the keyboard off, I had a look at the fan and there is a bit of dust on it but not very much. I have a Tecra M3 also, which is only half the age and, compared the fans, the M2 is about twice as dusty [if it were on your dinner table you'd wipe it down but there is not so much that you would imagine it to be a problem].
I mentioned previously that I was using Everest to monitor outputs from the temperature sensors and that crashes occur when the CPU temperature sits at 99 degrees for a while. Sometimes after turning it on after a crash, Everest is not able to display the CPU temperature. Am very reluctant to believe that the heat sensor on the chip has malfunctioned as all the internals were replaced in January (as was stolen and recovered somewhat worse for the adventure).
I have had to bite the bullet and move all my work to the Tecra M3 but am not very happy with this (the M3 I have is 1.86Ghz w/ 512MB vs 2.03Ghz w/ 1536MB RAM in the M2). As I'm sure you will appreciate, the cost of the M2 has now already been spent many times over in lost work time but one needs to know if they have an error related to software or if it is hardware, so as not to live in fear of a recurrance.
I will reinstall the M2 OS as soon as the work lag is caught up again (probably later this week) but really don't know what to try other than crash testing after each piece of software is reinistalled. Note, have already run the Toshiba Hardware Diagnosis console with no errors identified.
If you have any suggestions or thoughts on what I should try they are greatly appreciated!