Laptop overheating causing sluggishness?

Original thread: http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=165062
Second thread: http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=165345

Basically, I'm not sure what else it could be at this point. Suggestions on handy tools for checking temperatures and what normal ranges on a laptop would be would be handy in checking this out.

Thanks!

 

My laptop is still powered down as I don't want to repeatedly overheat it to test things out without some sort of plan worked out. Any advice?

 

If a laptop overheats, it will shut down to preserve the CPU. So I don't think you can blame the sluggishness on heat.

 

The slowdown seems to always coincide with the fan turning on. The Malware Removal and Software forums have ruled out malware and software possibilities, leaving hardware. I'm going to attempt to run some additional scans today on the hard disk to see if there are any problems there. Do you have any suggestions as to what the problem could be other than heat/cooling?

 

My laptop fans seems to turn on loudly at times but I have no slowdown.
I skimmed the other two threads

Have you run Process Explorer? Something is cusing explorer to spike its usage. I'd say some program is doing something in the background (maybe even more than one that is causing this sluggishness).

To troubleshoot: disconnet from the internet, turn off all security programs, make sure nothing is set to auto update...now use the computer and see if you still get the explorer spikes and the slow downs.

 

plodr:

Yes, I have done all of that. I have also gone through the Malware Removal forum's Readme process. TimW there has said that this is not a malware problem. As per my other threads, I mentioned that the spike in CPU usage is not limited to explorer.exe; whichever process I am using at the time of the slowdown shows an increase in CPU usage. I can more thoroughly document the CPU usage amounts and the corresponding slowdown if you would like. However, I would be grateful if you could suggest some tools or better methods than simply staring at Task Manager or Process Explorer and writing down numbers. Also of note is that my laptop fans do not immediately go to their maximum setting when the slowdown occurs, they merely crank up a notch, but it is a noticeable difference from their lower setting.

 

Posting again - I wish the time available to edit posts extended until someone else posts in the thread.

I tried another test to time the slowdown. To clarify, I DO still have Comodo Firewall Pro installed in case I absolutely MUST check my e-mail on that machine. My laptop has been practically useless for two weeks now, so I'm getting into a bit of trouble not being able to respond to e-mails in a timely fashion. =/

Anyway, basically, I powered on, logged in, and opened a video in Media Player Classic (MPC). Just a simply video with no fancy encoding (I think it used XviD), so it wouldn't be CPU intensive (like h.264 would). I then just watched the video and waited for the slowdown to occur.

After about 70 hours, 5 minutes powered off, I powered on for the test.
(minutes:seconds.hundredths)
#1 (MPC)
00:29.26 from power on to login screen
07:13.06 from login to slowdown
01:09.50 from Hibernate to powered off

MPC's CPU usage in Task Manager was listed as 9-34 normally. Upon hitting the "slowdown point", it suddenly spiked up to 86-94, and the rear-center fan of my laptop went up a notch. The Performance tab in Task Manager showed 100% CPU usage, various other processes were being squelched by MPC's now heavy usage. I opened Process Explorer and saved a system snapshot, then I closed it and MPC, but the slowness continued system-wide. Opening Windows Explorer windows was slow, moving them on the screen was slow, redrawing my desktop after minimizing windows was slow.

Attached is the system snapshot from Process Explorer to show MPC's CPU usage.

Additionally, I've opened Event Viewer to see if there was anything suspicious in it. On July 24, 2008, from 05:13 to 11:17, there are 660 events, 647 of which are Warnings such as this (the times were different though, at least one per minute, sometimes as many as three):

Code:

Type:  Warning
Date:  2008-07-24
Time:  05:13
Source:  avgntflt
Category:  None
Event:  18
User:  N/A
Description:  The description for Event ID ( 18 ) in Source ( avgntflt ) cannot
be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information
or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may
be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help
and Support for details. The following information is part of the event:
, TIMEOUT<MsMpEng.exe>

Occasionally, there was a truncated path and filename at the end of the description. These are probably related to the Windows Defender Quick Scan that was running at the time, but I still find it odd that there were so many Warnings.

However, weirder still is that I have entries on July 13, 2008 between 22:00 and 23:59. This is odd because my computer was powered off and in pieces at the time (I have a timestamped video on my cell phone of the dismantle, replacement, and reassembly procedure I performed on my laptop). I may have set the time incorrectly when I powered up after reassembly, but I thought that it would have corrected itself upon connecting to the Internet. Eh, maybe I can just mark that one down to setting the wrong time.

More importantly, I had powered my laptop back up to test for a slowdown. This time it occurred at least 20 minutes after logging in. I was browsing entries in the Event Viewer. I noticed that when I start up my machine NONE of the fans turn on with the computer. When the slowdown occurs, the rear central fan is the one that starts up.

 

Third post in a row.

As per the instructions here, I finally ran chkdsk using "chkdsk C: /r". It produced a short log saying that it removed some unused indexes and security descriptors. Afterwards, I started playing the same video from the previous test to see how the system would handle it. The rear-central fan was already on at startup time, so I was concerned at first, but the video played normally for 19 minutes before the system finally fell into a snail's pace. The rear-central fan did not kick up a notch at that time, and the rear-right fan did not turn on.

Honestly, this is getting more and more puzzling. I have not yet run Dial-A-Fix or System File Checker (I don't have the right disc to run SFC right now). I will probably try to run a hard disk surface scan and memtest tomorrow, unless anyone has any better ideas/suggestions.

 

Progress at last!

Okay, I found out something useful today. I ran memtest86 and CPU Burn-in from the Ultimate Boot CD. Both tests passed just fine. Then, I ran my computer's Dell Diagnostics CD to test a suspicion I had: one of my fans seemed to never turn on anymore. Some quick diagnostics on the fan confirmed; the fan was not obeying its settings at all. The diagnostics program indicates two fans in my machine: Processor Fan and Motherboard Fan. The one not working is my Processor Fan, which could mean that my processor has been baking itself into sludge these past two weeks. However, since CPU Burn-in didn't throw any error messages at me, I am holding on to hope that the processor has been protecting itself from any meltdowns by clocking down to its 1.2GHz rating instead of ramping up to 1.7GHz all the time.

I am now running more complete diagnostics to get some more information. Diagnostics Tests being run (this is more for my own reference):

• System Board Devices
• Processor Cache
• System Memory
• System Management BIOS
• Notebook Fan
• Notebook Thermal Sensor
• VESA/VGA Interface
• Misc. PCI Devices

Now the problem becomes this: I have no idea how to go about fixing this problem or what caused it (though it could be related to the incident a few weeks ago when I had to open my laptop up to replace the display panel housing and hinges).

Anyone here good with Dell laptop hardware?

 

All diagnostics passed, except for the Notebook Fan test on the Processor Fan.

Is there anyone here with a good knowledge of laptop (or Dell laptop) hardware? :cry

 

Well, stranger and stranger it gets.

I had the laptop off for a few days. When I sat down to open it up and look around, I just took a quick look at the fan in question, pulled out a few hairs that were sticking out of it, pulled out the modular CD-ROM drive and the battery, and let it sit there for a while. I powered it up using only the AC adapter, and suddenly the fan that wasn't working before now works.

The BIOS time setting got reset, probably from me taking out the battery without AC power. I reset that, and set the BIOS to run a Thorough POST, then I shut down and powered on the computer a few times to check that the fan kept turning back on. I reran the Dell Diagnostics for the fans and they turned out better than before (meaning that it reads the fan as ON now):

Code:

Processor Fan - Fan On/Off Test
Setting fan speed on high
Detected fan RPM = 6926 (it was 6737 one time)
Setting fan speed on low
Detected fan RPM = 4031
Setting fan speed off
Detected fan speed = 0
Processor Fan - Fan On/Off Test          : Pass

Motherboard Fan - Fan On/Off Test
Setting fan speed on high
Detected fan speed = 11177
Setting fan speed on low
Detected fan speed = 11709
Motherboard Fan - Fan On/Off Test          : Fail
  Result Code: 3700-011B
  Msg: Expected fan on low RPM of 8000. Detected fan RPM = 11709.

However, later I got a result message:

Code:

Motherboard Fan - Fan On/Off Test
Setting fan speed on high
Detected fan speed = 11437
Motherboard Fan - Fan On/Off Test          : Fail
  Result Code: 3700-011B
  Msg: Expected fan on high RPM of 8000. Detected fan RPM = 11437.

Motherboard Fan - Fan On/Off Test          : Pass

I don't mind the varying RPMs for the fans, but why are the expected values for both "low" and "high" 8000 RPM instead of different values? And how does the Motherboard Fan test both Fail and Pass in the same run?

As a "final" test, I've powered it up, logged into Windows, and opened up a video. So far, everything is operating just fine. I haven't reinstalled AntiVir yet, and I haven't hooked it up to the Internet, but I have no reason to believe that either of these will cause a hardware failure at this point. However, I would still like to understand what in the blue blazes caused the fan failure in the first place so that I could fix it in shorter than three weeks should this happen again.

Any ideas?