Windows 7 RTM Overheating Problem

jedwards · 12 Oct 2009

I wanted to post my experience in case others are having the same problem.

I have a Dell Latitude D620 with the Quadro NVS 110M graphics card. I have been running Windows 7 64 bit since the beta started. I switched to RC when it came out, again 64 bit. I just last week installed the 64 bit RTM professional code.

Since installing the RTM code, my system has shutdown three days in a row due to overheating. This did not happen in Beta or RC. This was a clean install. Technically I guess it was a clean upgrade from a clean RC install.

What I have found out so far is that at some point during the day svchost.exe freaks out and starts eating up 50% of the CPU. This causes the CPU to heat up and eventually overheats. My fans are working fine. I tested them using Dell Diagnostics. I do need to blow out my system, which will help. However, the root cause is svchost.exe freaking out and running constantly.

The first two times it overheated it happened while I was away from my computer. I came back to my desk and it would not come out of sleep. Well I thought it was sleeping but it was dead. I had to power it off and back on then I saw the error message about overheating.

The third day I noticed Windows running slower, then the fans switched from low to high. So I started looking at the Task Manager and found svchost.exe going wild. Then it shutdown before I had time to troubleshoot more.

I downloaded SpeedFan to monitor temperatures and Process Explorer to see more information. Day four, svchost.exe freaked out again and I could see my CPU cores heating up. I checked Process Explorer and Smart Card (SCardSrv) service appears to be the culprit. I tried killing that thread both in Process Explorer and by stopping the SmartCard service and both failed. So I rebooted before it overheated and all was well after the reboot.

I do not yet know the root cause or the exact trigger for scardsrv.dll freaking out. I do not use Smart Cards so I will likely try disabling that service and see if the CPU utilization problem and eventual overheating goes away.

If I find out any more I will post back here. Hopefully this helps someone else.

Jamie

jedwards · 12 Oct 2009

I did some more testing this morning and I have two updates.

The trigger is for the svchost.exe / scardsrv.dll cpu utilization problem is to sleep the computer twice in a row. I can reproduce this by...

1. Fresh boot.
2. Log in.
3. Wait for things to calm down.
4. Sleep the laptop.
5. Wait a minute.
6. Wake it up.
7. Wait a minute for things to calm down.
8. Sleep the laptop a second time.
9. Wake it up.
10. Wait a few seconds and svhost.exe goes to 50%. Then confirm with ProcessExplorer that it is Smart Card (SCardSrv) thread causing the problem.

This explains why the overheating happens late in the work day for me. It takes coming out of sleep two times for it to happen then time for it to run the CPU cores till they get too hot.

The second update is that disabling the Smart Card service does prevent this problem.

I suppose if I wasn't too busy or had a spare D620 I would try this on a totally clean system with no 3rd party software. Then if it still happened I would try the 32bit version. I think for now I'm sticking with the disabled Smart Card service.

I posted this as a overheating problem, though others might first see this as a performance problem, or CPU ultilization problem depending on how quickly you catch the problem or how good your cooling system is.

Anyways, hopefully this helps someone else.

kegobeer · 12 Oct 2009

Did you happen to install any of the Dell Vista drivers?

logicearth · 12 Oct 2009

Do you have or using a smart card reader on that laptop?

zigzag3143 · 12 Oct 2009

Jamie

hi and welcome to seven forums really nice post. I just had a user with the same problem. There was a fix which I found on google. You can also disable (or put to manual) the service. you can get info on blackviper.com

hope this helps

Ken

jedwards · 12 Oct 2009

@kegobeer I did not install any Dell drivers. All drivers came by default during the install except the video driver which came during the first windows update. I believe this to be same as RC. I believe in Beta that I downloaded beta video drives from nvidia. In Beta and RC I did install Dell Vista 64 bit drivers for the touch pad so I can use the scroll function and accidental tap detection piece. I have not done that yet for the RTM code. I checked Dell's site but as expected they did not have any Windows 7 drivers posted for my laptop.

@logicearth I have a smart reader built into the laptop, but do not use it. Hence the reason I can get away with disabling the Smart Card service. I guess I should also note that this laptop has the fingerprint scanner, but I don't use that either.

@zipzag3134 Thanks for the welcome. I found this site when researching this problem and really like it. I will check out google and blackviper.com for the other (not the not the disabling Smart Card service) fix you mentioned.

kegobeer · 12 Oct 2009

Download the Dell Vista drivers (32 or 64 bit, depending on your version of 7) and install them. See if that helps. Install them in compatibility mode if necessary.

jedwards · 13 Oct 2009

zigzag3143 said:

Jamie

hi and welcome to seven forums really nice post. I just had a user with the same problem. There was a fix which I found on google. You can also disable (or put to manual) the service. you can get info on blackviper.com

hope this helps

Ken

Hi Ken,

I have been searching Google and Blackviper.com and haven't found this other solution you talked about. Do you remember anything about it? Was it a driver update? A patch from microsoft?

Thanks,

Jamie

pbcopter · 13 Oct 2009

What do you mean by:
"Technically I guess it was a clean upgrade from a clean RC install." ?

jedwards · 13 Oct 2009

pbcopter said:

What do you mean by:
"Technically I guess it was a clean upgrade from a clean RC install." ?

I had upgrade media so I couldn't format and directly install the RTM code. So I formatted and installed RC. Then did a clean upgrade of RC.