PC Problem...

[Buffalobiian]

Clean out the vents for dust?

Fix the CPU fan?

Mechanical cooling is failing, that's for sure.

Anything beyond 65-70C should be raising eyebrows, and you're hitting 98C...

[Killa-Eyez]

I will totally disassemble the laptop and check any fan and air vent for dust. Should I try reapplying some new cooling paste on the processor while I'm at it? And got maybe any more hints on how to keep my laptop from heating besides cleaning it? Thanks Buffolobiian, and thanks anyone.

[Buffalobiian]

Should I try reapplying some new cooling paste on the processor while I'm at it?

If you want, I guess there's nothing stopping you. Sounds like it's past the warranty period for it to be an issue anyway.

And got maybe any more hints on how to keep my laptop from heating besides cleaning it?

Besides using it on a hard, flat surface to ensure it gets enough ventilation around the bottom of the device, I don't think there's much you can do. Cleaning the vents is the best thing you can do, since dust clogging up the vents reduces airflow, making the fans work harder, which in turn leads to more wear and tear.

---------------------------

Following up my previous post:

Ran into a little problem of my own after I installed Win7.

1) Wireless connection: card drivers are all up to date, but it can't detect a wireless network. SSID broadcasting is off.

2) Wired connection works fine, but after 20hrs of (router/modem) updown, the router will freeze (no internet access, does not respond to ping commands). <- I'm still troubleshooting this by testing various settings / disconnecting various things. Progress is slow since I can only see the effects of 1 setting per day.

The problem here seems to be that my router is incompatible with IPv6, and somehow causes the router to lock up (unresponsive to pings, no internet access). I've disabled now, and I've had ~31hrs of router uptime without any problems. I'll post again if the issue comes up.

Note that simply unchecking the IPv6 protocol under "Adapter Properties" doesn't fully disable IPv6, as Command Prompt > ipconfig will still show an IPv6/Toredo address.

Microsoft has an article that details how to effectively disable it via regedit:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929852

(I used the value "0xffffffff")

[itadakimasu]

this is a laptop?

Damn... that's way too hot!!!!

as far as I'm concerned, max safe temp for a cpu is going to be in the 50's. 90+ is way too hot.

Last night, I installed my am3 motherboard w\ my athlon II 620 oc'd to 3ghz... also installed mw2. I got into my 2nd game and with no warning my system shut down.

I restarted and went to bios to look at cpu temp and it was i think 105c! ( nearly 250f ).

sucks that it's a laptop because the cpu isn't easily accessible. It's just a general pain to diagnose because each step of the way is going to require taking it apart vs a desktop where you can maybe add a new cooler.

Make sure you have adequate airflow and that nothing is caked w\ dust... How old is your laptop? Is it under warranty? was it sitting unused for an extended period of time?

My cpu fan was plugged in but wasn't running!!! Plugged it into a different port and now it's going and temps are levelling out.

I ran a stress test overnight, and w\ the cpu oc'd to 3ghz, temps didn't get about 50c. So, it helps when your cpu fan is actually working!

[Killa-Eyez]

I ran a stress test overnight, and w\ the cpu oc'd to 3ghz, temps didn't get about 50c. So, it helps when your cpu fan is actually working!

I bet.

Make sure you have adequate airflow and that nothing is caked w\ dust... How old is your laptop? Is it under warranty? was it sitting unused for an extended period of time?

It fell off the back of a lorry, so no warranties. It's now around 3 years old..
Haven't come around to it yet. I'll keep you guys posted.

Edit: Removed all the dust, but did not yet put some new cooling paste on the cpu. It improved a little bit, system's not rebooting. Temps are still high though:

http://i47.tinypic.com/21lle9l.png

The paste will only help so much. I think maybe getting a new fan???

[Buffalobiian]

So we've had a HDD break down in the house (can't be detected whatsoever. Tested in two different systems), so we bought a new one as it was urgent.

The HDD's still covered by warranty... so I was thinking.. should we return it? There shouldn't be any "classified" files on there, just programs, windows etc.

I think there's VOIP program that autologins though, same with a few other websites perhaps (yahoo mail?).

Should I return it and get a replacement, or destroy it?

Or maybe I could rub it against a subwoofer? (though unsure if that'll void warranty)

[Kraco]

I'm so cheap I'd definitely return it. But I suppose that also depends on what manner of data you are storing. I don't personally have anything that would interest anybody so much that they would go through the trouble of stealing it from a broken drive (I hear that's a highly expensive service if you buy it from a specialist). A couple of years ago I did return a 35 months old HD that caught fire. If they rescued the disk without a permission, I hope they enjoyed the anime, because it was my anime archive drive...

In short, if I was a sick pervert hoarding cp, I probably wouldn't return a drive, otherwise I would.

[Buffalobiian]

Well it depends on how broken the drive is too. I'm thinking of a case where it might be something loose and they just fix, check and steal.

Nothing really important, but I think it's got cookies that autologin to websites and stuff.

And you're making it sound like I've got cp if I end up not returning it!

[Alhuin]

Was the HD not detected as the primary (boot) HD, or could you not even recognize it as a secondary? If you can't get the HD to recognize at all, in any way possible, even through an external enclosure, then returning it is fine. The store will just ship it back to the manufacture, they will "fix" it and ship it back, and the store will sell it refurbished. I wouldn't worry about your data, cause I'm sure the manufacture gets enough returned HDs that they are more focused (or have a quicker process) on fixing them and sending them out.

[Buffalobiian]

It's an internal drive that simply can't be detected. You plug it in and boot up the PC using a recovery disc, and can't even see the HDD to write the image onto. It's non-existent.

[Alhuin]

Not that this matters for your situation, but my roommates computer is weird like that as well... Her HD is fine, but she had a problem one time where she was stuck in an infinite boot-up loop, so I tried using my various recovery disks (ERD Commander, Ultimate Boot CD for XP, and a plain Recovery Disk) and none of them could recognize her HD. No idea why. She finally got her computer working again, but those disks still will not recognize the HD. It might be because she has a tablet laptop? I don't know.

Anyways, your description of what is happening to yours reminded me of that. And I was just asking if you could recognize it as a secondary HD (not the boot HD) to see if you could just format it from Windows.

I'd go ahead and return it though. If you are really worried about the possibility of leaking personal information, just change the passwords for the services you think may be in jeopardy.

[Buffalobiian]

In one of the configurations I tried the HDD was plugged in with other HDDs, one of which contained a bootable partitian.

And the recovery disks I put in was Nero BackItUp2 disc that's Linux based.

[Board of Command]

Does the BIOS detect it? There are bootable tools that are designed to erase hard drives provided they are detectable.

[Buffalobiian]

How do I find it in the BIOS?

(Looking for it in the BIOS was actually one of the things I did when diagnosing it. I couldn't find it, but it could easily have been because I didn't know where to look).

[darkshadow]

It should detect it on one of the sata channels listed

[Buffalobiian]

It should detect it on one of the sata channels listed

Oh, that. (boot screen?)

No, it doesn't detect.

Sitting on "Detecting IDE drives" for minutes before moving off was the first sign that it was broken.

[darkshadow]

no not the boot screen, in the bios itself, it shows what occupies what channel

[complich8]

Something to be aware of, if you're paranoid, is that what's probably hosed up is the electronics on the drive. If someone found an identical (or near-identical) drive that worked (or had bad platters or heads but a good controller), they could swap the board onto your good platters/good heads/bad electronics and have a working drive with no data loss. This is something that I've had to do to recover some data from a director-level boss's disk after all else failed, so I've got firsthand experience saying that it's not even particularly hard to do.

If there's data there that's sensitive, .... well, it's probably still not sensitive enough that someone picking through the trash is going to do that. If you've got things like ... your social security number, credit card numbers, name/address, tax returns, you might opt to dismantle and destroy the disk yourself, or maybe not, up to you.

If you ship it back to the manufacturer, they'll salvage the parts that are good and destroy the parts that are bad, but they'll also zero out any content on the resulting refurb disk before they ship it out again. They're ... usually pretty good about that.

[Animeniax]

I have an Asus P5Q Pro Turbo motherboard with a Q6600 CPU running Windows 7 32-bit. I put the computer to sleep and while it was winding down I tapped the keyboard and it started the wake up process, then shut down. Now it won't boot. When I power on the system, the fans run, the DVD drive spins up, then the system sits. No beeps, no monitor activity, no harddrive activity, and I've let it sit for 30 minutes with no activity. On the PS/2 keyboard, the only activity is the numlock light will light up/turn off when I press numlock.

Troubleshooting: I disconnected the PSU and let it sit overnight, unplugged extra drives and removed unnecessary cards, disconnected the PS/2 keyboard, unplugged the power connector from the motherboard, removed the CMOS battery and moved the jumper to clear CMOS settings.

One thing that was weird was when the system first woke from sleep, a BIOS message appeared saying I need to enter setup and load settings, which I did. After that, the motherboard will not POST. Could it be the CMOS battery is dead or the mainboard is dead?

[Killa-Eyez]

Letting you guys know that since I cleaned out the laptop the heating issue was resolved. No more crashes! BUT, on to the next, bigger problem;

I just finished watching Ergo Proxy in Full-HD on my 52" plasma TV via HDMI from my laptop and started the game Portal afterwards to see how it would look like in 1080p. After closing Portal I left the laptop alone for about 30-40 min. while still hooked up to the TV. My energy settings are: when power plugged in, only turn off the screen after 10 min. Then I moved my wireless mouse around to get the screen back. For a fraction the TV channel info would change from just "HDMI" to "HDMI Widescreen, 1080p" and back to just "HDMI" again. The screen would flash white when the cannel info changed and went back to a black screen immediately. I waited for like 5 min. not paying too much attention to it, thinking it'd come back by itself, but nothing happened. I opened my laptop which would usually show the screen but with a very big resolution but it remained black (I think). Unplugged the HDMI-cable, but nothing happened. Left it alone for a couple of minutes and the laptop started rebooting by itself, showing the following screen below.

Anyone familiar with this???

Edit: Going to try this: http://www.laptoprepair101.com/lapto...-turned-white/