Computer causing me to overheat
 

Lately my laptop (just over a year old) has been making a whistling sound and shutting down. After this happens, I’ve noticed that it’s pretty warm on the left hand side. It’s not in a warm place and the temperature in my office stays pretty cool. Maybe I just need to figure out how to defluff it but I’m worried that the problem could be more complicated than that.

This may or may not be significant but my son replaced my hard drive about three weeks ago and also switched my operating system from Vista to XP. (I think I’ve used up my annual quota of tech fixes that adult sons are willing to do for their technologically-challenged mothers.)

The shutting down only happens when the computer is plugged in—not when I’m just using the battery. This is probably a dumb question but…… does a laptop run hotter when plugged in? And this is a rhetorical question …….why does my five-year-old cheap laptop run pretty well while my more expensive newer one has been an ongoing pain in the butt:{

Thanks in advance for any insight or advice anyone may be able to offer.

LA

Yes, it can do. Have you considered dumping a can of compressed air through it, or getting the vacuum cleaner on the various cooling slots in case dust has built up on the heatsink, if any?

Does the laptop fan, if it has one, seem to behave any differently? If you try the vacuum, there's a small risk you can damage the fan.

Although you think you've used up your quota of tech fixes, it sounds to me you could claim under warranty here since your son changed drives 3 weeks ago. :)

Hi LA,

How I wish for my technologically-challenged mother to want help from her IT certified son, but I'll leave that to a therapist some other time...

Laptop quality is usually something that is only seen on the pricing sticker. But in my experience, any cheaper laptop with a sticker on the underside stating "Caution, do not place directly on skin as laptop may become hot", should really just be saying "This laptop is not well designed and may burn you". Paying an extra $400 or so to get a well made/designed laptop can have its advantages! :ok:

In saying that, from what you describe, you've had this laptop for a year at least with everything going fine, and only recently (since the harddrive replacement) has it started to shutdown and get warm(er than it used to). Two possible causes,

• the battery is faulty and the laptop is trying VERY hard to charge it when it cannot be charged (hence the overheat/shutdown), or
• the new harddrive is faulty.

Harddrives themselves can build up heat (they do spin at 5,400 rpm at least!), and if not designed well, that heat may not dissipate well, causing components to short/fuse/overheat. Most electrical components failsafe action is to switch off/shut down. The trick is working out whether the two are related for you, but it is one of those things that will need a technician to look at as it is really hard to say remotely what the problem definitively is... :\

To troubleshoot, here are the two steps I would do:

1. Shutdown and remove the battery from the laptop. Plug the power into the laptop and then start it up without the battery at all (just running off the mains). Does it shutdown or get unusually warm? If yes, then harddrive is more likely the culprit. If it doesn't, then warranty replacement time for that battery.
2. Shutdown and remove the battery from the laptop. Put the old (Vista) harddrive back in (you'll probably need a small screwdriver or some help) and power it up and test if it still shuts down, or makes the whistling noise.

I hope that makes sense, or helps...
:)

All the best!

Matt

Bushfiva and Matt, thank you very much for your replies.

Bushfiva
I don't think my computer has a fan. If it does, it’s a very quiet one. Am a little nervous about trying the vacuum. I might opt for the compressed air. Interesting to know that a laptop can run hotter when plugged in. Might have to try the warranty angle with my son. I can just see the eye rolling now…. And of course there will be the usual “What did you do?”:rolleyes:

Matt
I will try your suggestions tomorrow morning when I’m feeling more awake. Thanks for your detailed rely. It all helps and occasionally a little even sinks in. Was relieved that my laptop doesn't have a "Caution, do not place directly on skin as laptop may become hot" warning. Good luck with that therapy thing.;)

Thanks again, guys!

(Now if I could only figure out how to do the quotes in the blue boxes—a challenge for another day.)

Latey, probably more information that you wanted to know....

The laptop runs hotter when plugged in mainly because of power management. When the machine is on batteries, it throttles the processor's speed (clock frequency) to extend battery life but when plugged into the mains, the settings via Windows or a manufacturer helper app and driver or BIOS allow the processor to run at full steam. Charging the battery does add more heat, but most of that will be made in the adapter, not the machine itself.

Processors have an on-chip temp sensor and will shut themselves down if it starts getting into the overheat zone. Many machines have a temp monitoring capability in the BIOS screen and there are some free programs you can download that will tell you how hot your processor is running and even the fan speed.

While it could be related to the hard drive replacement, and a compatibility check might be in order, you might have an overheating processor. The noise could be related to the fan which all recent build laptops would have unless they are Macs which you do not have.

The whistling could be the fan motor, the hard drive motor, or an electrical short causing an internal switching power supply to run amok. That last one would not be good. Look around for vents and when you have used the laptop for a period of time you should be able to feel a warm light breeze coming from within at one of the vents. That air coming from the processor fan.

Good Luck!

I've had the same problem with a former laptop. In my case it was an obscure fault: they forgot to put heatsink compound between the CPU chip and the heatsink in manufacture - easy to fix once I'd decided to open it up and take a look. Not something to expect, although I found several other folks who had one from the same batch.

A friend of mine brought me her laptop the other week - it kept shutting down when in heavy use. I could hear the fan wasn't working, so bought a replacement fan off Ebay beforehand. When I opened it up, the internal fan wasn't plugged in to the motherboard. She admitted, then, that it had never been right but she'd been too busy to take it back, and the warranty had expired.

I'd be inclined to download and run a temperature sensing programme to see what's going on. Depending what make/model it is, there may be a specific one for that model, or one of the generic packages such as Everest may do the job. If that shows the CPU going above about 80°C, then something needs to be done.

I have one running all the time on my laptop, displaying CPU and hard drive temperatures (57°C and 36°C at the moment).

The folks above are spot on that a laptop will run faster and hotter when powered off the mains.

Can anyone tell me why the site took my carefullly formatted message above, and took out all the spaces to make it one lump?

[Edit: I remembered the fix on another forum was "delete all cookies". So I deleted all PPRuNe cookies, re-did the formatting above, and ... guess what!]

There's a setting one can change...I'll have a quick look.

this, but I have a feeling there's a quicker way.

PPRuNe Forums > User Control Panel Waaaaaaaaaaaay down the bottom.
Edit Options

Vapilot, thank you for your response. I found your explanation very informative. I seem to have a talent for making computers malfunction (computer techs at my former workplace will back me up on that…….I still have the words “I’ve never seen it do that before” ringing in my ears):ouch:, so I am interested in learning more about how they work. Incidentally, I could feel warmish air coming out of the vents.

Keef, thanks for sharing your experience and for the information about the temperature sensing programs. That sounds like a good idea and I will look into getting one on my computer.

Matt, you suggested running my laptop without the battery.

I did that and it didn’t shutdown or get unusually warm. So, it could be the battery or maybe I didn’t run it long enough— wasn’t at my computer as long as usual today. Re your suggestion about putting the hard drive back in, I forgot to mention that it’s toast. The reason my son replaced it was that my computer crashed one week after the warranty ran out and couldn’t be restarted.:{ (Lost some stuff that I hadn’t backed up but it was a quick and effective way to get rid of a lot of garbage and surprisingly I haven’t missed that much.)

Bushfiva, I think I’ll chance vacuuming the vents. Have a small vac that might do the trick.

Thanks to all of you for your input and for explaining things in a way that even a technophobe like me can understand—no mean feat.:ok: I’ll try your suggestions and monitor things for the next week. Will let you know the results.

LA

The temperature of the PC is heavily dependent on what software is running.

Mine will loaf along at under 50°C all day, unless I run the Volvo Ocean Race game. Then it gets to 80° and starts to complain.

I'd suggest a temperature monitor, and then watch to see what the CPU and/or HD temperatures do.

I particularly like Network Hardware Control aka nhc (yes, it IS a temperature and CPU monitor) - two little icons in the taskbar with the two temperatures.

That makes sense and it reminded me of something I was wondering about. Does the number of websites you have open at one time have any bearing on the temperature?

The answer's somewhere between "no" and "yes". For PPRuNe-like pages, no. For pages with streaming video, then yes.

Interesting. Thanks!

??????
 

I took Keef’s advice and downloaded Notebook Hardware Control three days ago to get more insight into what was going on. Being somewhat compulsive, I checked the temperature about every 30 seconds the first day—less often now. Here’s the strange part….. I know NHC only checks the temperature and doesn’t control it. However, since I installed that program, my computer hasn’t overheated or shutdown even once.I don’t know what’s normal but my CPU temperature is now ranging between 36 and 42—highest was 49 and the HD temperature has fluctuated between 32 and 39. Even without NHC I could tell that the temperature was staying lower because my keyboard has stayed cool.
:confused:

Maybe something jiggled back into place (how’s that for a technical explanation). Will be taking my laptop with me on holiday in a couple of days so it will be interesting to see if being jostled around and prodded by security types has any bearing on how it operates after that. Current temperature….CPU 38, HD 36.

If it ain't broke - don't fix it!!!

:D

Could be any number of things, but that's good news nonetheless.

Have a great holiday and make sure your laptop stays in your bag whilst away...

Matt

The jury is still out. I used to think that computers, unlike people, behave in logical and predictable ways. Now I’m convinced they’re inhabited by evil spirits who exist solely to torment clueless users like myself and make us question our sanity.

Thanks for your help and good wishes, Matt.

36-42 is certainly a range I would be happy to live with. This machine I'm typing from currently sat at 35 on the cpu, 43 on system temp - although it is boiling in the office.

Actually, NHC does do things. It will, if allowed, take action to stop the chip and HD overheating. Somewhere in the "Extended" instruction set are the bits that tell it to do or not to do.

But if it's fixed it...

I suspect the inbuilt temperature control software wasn't accling, and NHC has taken on the role. Some you win.

Thanks for setting me straight about that.

It might be worth checking in your case to see if NHC is "enabled" to control stuff. I think the default is that it doesn't interfere, but maybe if it sees no other controlling going on... In which case, tweaking the options it offers might get a bit more performance.

It does in fact offer a pretty comprehensive selection of tweaks to voltages, speeds, and the like. The "paid for" version does even more.

On my ThinkPad, it reports but doesn't touch, although I'm contemplating changing that.