[?] SXPS16 Overheated While Sleeping?

Alright, weirdest thing just happened to my fairly new Studio XPS 1645 (with extended battery)... I had it charging this afternoon while it was in sleep mode (lid closed). I took it off of the charger to go to class, and put the laptop in my bag. I had a test in my first class, so I couldn't take the laptop out. I just got to my next class, I opened my bag and blasted with a bubble of incredible heat from my bag. I quickly opened the compartment and could barely touch ANY part of the laptop! It was INCREDIBLY hot all over! I opened the lid to let some air through and make sure the screen wasn't damaged, except it didn't wake up automatically. I pressed the power button and it started up and I got a warning that the battery was unrecognized. I shutdown the laptop and removed/reseated the battery and started it up again. I then got a warning that the battery was critically low. I have it plugged into the charger now so I can write this, but I'm freaking out that the laptop is damaged now...

Are there any tests I can run (besides Dell diagnostics) to see if any components took damage or a permanent performance hit?

And does anyone know happened? I always close the lid after I'm done using my laptop in the morning, put it on the charger, then take it to class. There is never any heat when I wake it back up, but something went wrong this time...

Thanks in advance!

 

Depending on what you have installed, your laptop may wake up to perform different tasks; even though you had put it to sleep. This could really be troublesome, especially in a laptop bag. You can see what is scheduled to run by looking at the task scheduler. This is a Windows 7 thing.

As for the heat, you probably did do damage. The Dell diagnostics are still your best bet. I would probably extend my warranty as long as possible, just in case.

 

I'm already on a 4-year premium warranty, so thankfully I'm covered in that aspect.

I haven't added any software or changed any settings on my laptop for the past few weeks. I viewed the task scheduler and there is nothing out of the ordinary. The only automatic thing I can think of is Outlook syncing with my Exchange server, but that has never caused my laptop to wake up before.

 

In my opinion, you probably didn't do any permanent damage except possibly to the battery. In general, motherboards hit the kill switch when a predetermined high temperature is reached.

You're battery will likely report that it is fine at first. If there is a problem, when you are at around 20-40% battery power it will then realize it is fully drained.

 

This happened to me once (verbatim), I thought I'd fried my system, it turned out to be fine. To prevent this in the future see this thread: Thread