Hi NickMcNack, It was a good thought by your friend to clean up the fans, along with that I also suggest you to flash BIOS to the latest version from the link given below: BIOS: [URL] The system should work fine without any issues after this. Reply to this post for further assistance. Note: While flashing BIOS make sure there is uninterrupted power supply to the system. Do not use the system till it restarts and comes up to the desktop. “To know more about Dell’s products, services and drivers & downloads, please go to [URL] "
I have an Inspiron 546 running Windows 7 with a AMD Athlon II X2 240 Processor 2.80 GHz with 2 gigs of ram and a 64 bit OS. I have had it for a few years now, but within the last year it has been spontaneously shutting down at certain times. It has only happened at times when I am playing some kind of video game. I asked a friend of mine who is a a little better with computers than me, and he unscrewed the side panel of the CPU and the inside had a good amount of dust in it. After cleaning it, the computer ran fine and it stopped giving me that problem. About a day ago it started again, I was playing a game and it shut off. I opened it up and cleaned some dust out, and it seemed to work, but today it did it again. I went on the dell website and ran a diagnostic, but all it said was I needed an upgrade for the DVD-ROM drive. I'm at a loss, luckily the computer works fine when I'm not playing a game on it, but I would like to know if I can fix it somehow.
Random Shut Downs