I think Sony really made a mistake somewhere in their BIOS settings. Once again I was running my laptop on Performance processor settings so it would run at the full 1.8ghz while plugged in. After a few minutes it shut itself off. Truthfully it didnt even feel too hot. A litle hotter than adaptive but definitely not a “melting” point. I wonder if they set the shutoff point too low, or if the sensors are too sensitive. Maybe this is why my fans never shutoof also.

I remember someone saying in another forum that their computer shutoff when playing Doom 3 for more than a few minutes. This would be the same scenario because I’m sure Doom 3 just forces the laptop to run at max CPU as well. I’m assuming there are more of us with this problem.

Maybe they need a BIOS update? Or a way to tell us what to change the settings to. I think this is a big problem right now. It may even fix our issues with the fans.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

I wonder if there just may be a problem with your Type S. I’ve never had my Type S shutdown at all. I don’t often run my system at Performance settings since the adaptive settings are very good. For the most part, there’s no real reason to run at performance mode all the time from what I’ve seen. The CPU is smart enough to know when to throttle to full speed.

I’ll try running mine at Performance for the day to see if it exhibits any weirdness.

Any abnormal behaviour yet GroovyOne?

No problems here, and I’ve been running Doom3, Far Cry and many others for quite a few hours at a stretch.

I did replace the machine, but that was because I thought the fan was faulty as it was noisy, but it turns out it is a ‘feature’ of the S series.

I’ve even been fiddling with the ATI Tool to see how far I can clock the graphics chip, and its been running over the standard speeds for 2 hours, and the base does not feel any hotter.

3D Mark 2001 11,000+
3D Mark 2003 2780

That seems very strange, I have my S170 on Performance most of the time and it runs just fine. The fans don’t even come on that often unless I’m doing something intensive. I’ve left the machine on a bed at full performance and it’s gotten scorching hot, but has never shut off. It sounds like something might be amiss with yours.  :o

Im almost sure its a software problem because I turned power management off and the system hasnt shut down like it was before. So I am running on performance and its fine. It was just when I set power management to the Home/Office Desk setting. I don’t really know if I should worry now.

About the fans though, I thought it was normal for them to be running constantly on this notebook. I’m on performance and my fans havent shut off once.

Am I the only one? Wadham, are your fans on all the time also?

Thanks guys.

I wonder if one of your Power Management Schemes was corrupted, what happens if you create a new scheme with settings identical to the one that’s giving you problems and give it a different name? It’ll be interesting to see if that causes the same problems.

cellery, i’ll try that. thanks for the advice. How do you make sure your fans only turn on when they need to? I’ve read on other forums and in the “famous” review that the s170 fans tend to be on constantly (which is what I’m experiencing also.

You are the first case Ive heard when the fans arent on all the time.

The fan is on a lot of the time, yes, and it spins up and shuts down a lot - much more than any other notebook I have. When the machine is idle it will spin up every minute or two and then spin down again. When I do anything vaguely taxing to the system the fan will stay on.

It does a good job of keeping the machine cool, however I just wish it wasn’t so noisy. It’s almost reminiscent of the issues Dell had with their Inspirons a few years ago….

well, as soon as you do ANYTHING the fan will activate. You can set the power options so that the fan will turn on less, but the cpu will drop in speed to compensate, thus leaving you with reduced performance.