Hazards of Freezing a Laptop

Actually, being in sub zero temperatures would be good for your laptop! Except for the hard drive as it's bearings can freeze. What I suggest to do is start the laptop when you are inside somewhere so that the hard drive starts spinning and building up heat before you bring it outside. Then slowly introduce it to the cold (growing intervals of time) and see how the laptop (mainly the hard drive) responds. The only reason I dont suggest starting up the laptop when you are in freezing weather is because the laptop uses a fluid bearing and if that was frozen and then you started the laptop, it could harm the hard drive.

That's my hypothesis. I urge anyone more knowledgeable on sub zero laptop usage to respond.

All good questions hiramhenry. 

I have had my computer with me for an extended time (maybe 8-9 hours) when the air temperature was no warmer than -35F, so I can say for sure that having the machine at that temperature while turned off will cause no problems.

When I was in this situation, I let the machine 'warm up' from this temp. before I powered it on.  The ambient air temperature where I was inside was a steady 30F while using the computer.  Once the boot process was complete, I was getting an initial reading of 1C from FanGUI for the HDD temperature.  I didn't have any problems at all, except that the screen was a bit dimmer than usual - and a tad blurry - for a couple of minutes until things warmed up a bit.  The HDD temp was hovering in the teens and the CPU temp never got much above 25C.

According to Dell's spec sheets the min/max operating temperature for notebooks is 32F/95F and the min/max storage temperature is -40F/149F.

One of the several hazards that I can think of in running a laptop in below freezing temperatures is, as CSmith06 notes, the oil/grease that lubricates the HDD will thicken when cold, causing strain on the motor and bearings.  A second is the possibility of the LCD cracking due to expansion of the liquid crystals.  Supposedly the 'newer' LCDs can handle lower storage temperatures than older ones. 

Condensation due to temperature differences might be another cause of troubles if the computer is taken from a cold environment to a warm/humid one.  Thusly, if you are moving a frozen computer into a warm (say 40F+) room, you'll want to be sure to let it warm up to very near the air temperature before powering it up.

LCD response times also slow down when they get cold, as CECarl indicated.

There are also bearings in the CD drives, but i don't know if they are the greased type.

Basically, anything solid state is fine, and will actually run better at a colder temp (see the toms hardware article about cooling a p4 with liquid Nitrogen)

A bit more information regarding running a notebook in sub-zero tempertures for those who are interested:

Out of a sense of reckless curiosity, I decided to flip on my M60 this weekend when both the ambient and computer temperatures were well below 0C.  The computer was in a room that was a constant -10C to -20C for about 10 hours before I started it up.

The computer went to the BIOS screen like normal, but about half-way through one of the fans came on full-bore.  I hadn't heard it run that fast since I had last done some serious gaming.  The normally white password screen was a dim pinkish color, but once I had entered the password the computer continued to boot like normal.  Everything else sounded fine except for the high speed fan.

It took about 30% longer than normal to complete the boot process, and while the machine was still showing the Windows welcome screen, the second fan kicked on - again at full-bore.

Once I was able to open FanGUI, the CPU temperature was showing 85C, The HDD was reading 254C, the DIMM was 0C and the GPU was at 1C. 

Having had some experience with the i8100 BIOS problem where the CPU temp would lock at 85C, I tried the Fn+Z key combo which properly reset the CPU temp to 0.  About 5 seconds later it jumped back 'up' to 85C.  The HDD temp stayed constant at the obviously innacurate 254C.

After about a minute-and-a-half the CPU temp and HDD temp almost simultaneously hit 0C, and both of the fans stopped.  I can only assume that the temperature sensors were not programmed to handle readings below zero, which would explain the 85C CPU temp and the obviously incorrect HDD temps.

Other than the fans and the strange temperature readings the computer ran just fine.  I worked with it for about a half hour, and in that time the CPU temp never got over 10C.  The DIMM and HDD temps were between 10-15C and the GPU was around 20C.

I have used the computer for a total of about 12 hours since then, and I can report no problems at all.  I certainly wouldn't recommend starting a notebook when the temperature is below 0C, but it apparently can handle it without any permanent damage.

most batterys dont like freezing