I have had the same problem since upgrading from vista to 7 I manage mine with a cooling station with a few fans in it, seems to work, as soon as I unplug it or even if I use it on my bed it will over heat pretty fast even with the cooling station on! Would recommend one even if a temporary fix....
Notebooks are not made to be used on a soft surface like beds, carpets, pillows and the like. Using it on soft surfaces allows the soft surface to collect and retain the heat from the bottom of the unit. making the whole unit hotter. If you look at any notebook they have small feet on them. That is to raise the unit off of what it is sitting on so some air can get underneath it. Some even have vents on the bottom so the fan/s can draw air in from the bottom helping the air movement on the bottom and with it on a soft surface no air can get to the cooling heat sink for the CPU and graphic card CPU. the fans run but don't move any air because there is none to move.
Then there is something wrong with either the fans, or the air flow (a blockage), or the actual heat sink in the system.
Could also be you have it set to not use Speed Step, like a power setting or BIOS setting, and the CPU is running at full speed all the time. Not good for battery life and cooling.
Have cleaned out and checked the CPU fan. replaced thermal compound on heat sink but still it gets very hot. With out the power saving tweeks in power management menus it will overheat quicker. removing Mc Afee and using AVG helps further as I dont think it demands as much from CPU in the back ground. these all seem to be tweeks that limit CPU processor usage rather than solve the root cause. I still havent quite got my head around the sys internals proc monitor that FAFHRD advised to check in previous posts- I cannot single out any single process with sys internals that is demanding too much. -but I'm not giving up just yet! all advice still greatly appreciated!
I see the same problem and I have certain repeatable facts:
1. Cold start of laptop: fan speed (even before w7 starts) is NEAR TO ZERO - ok.
2. Hot start of laptop (just worked): fan speed is MIDDLE/FULL - ok.
3. During w7 work: fan speed is SAME AS DURING laptop start, irrespective CPU is 100% for many time or idle for many time - NOT ok.
4. Item 3 is not killer when I had HOT start (item 2).But in case I had cold start - soon CPU will reach 90 in case I will use laptop heavily - NOT ok.
5. I have tried all possible compibinations of power settings including advanced etc. It not helps.
6. WORKAROUND: When I want to set fan speedy FOREVER because i see CPU is hot - I go to power management plan section and simply change plan from one to another one (radio button) - as result w7 tries to change plan, it sees deadly hot CPU and immediately runs Fan FULL SPEED. Then it is full speed forever until I will switch off laptop.
7. asus a8j. bios is freshest one 212. same was with 211. Problem is that with 209 w7 cannot be installed - constant reboot on 2nd second of install/boot. So, it seems asus have failed to manage it. WinXP worked perfect.
I agree with this. My HP laptop with win 7 64 bit is going crazy after I installed Mcafee and it continues to do so even after removing MCafee ..Mistake #1? Installing McAfee.That too I installed MCafee on a fresh Win7 re-install.
wierd thing is that the CPU utilization (on task manager) is below 30% on average, but CPU seems to be running hot and fan is getting noisier.. Could this be because of the dust .. But the cpu noise clearly coincided with the installation of MCafee ..
Just need my laptop back to be quiet.. let me know if anyone has solved this problem.
I will try fafhrd's solution .. hopefully that will work
Still have not really fixed this and got my laptop back performing like it did pre 7 install.
Its better, after removing mc Afee and trying performance tweeks, but will still run hotter, with less applications running than before. I have a laptop cooler. -Not ideal but it does help manage the heat very well. -Resigned myself to sticking with the Acer laptop for now, but would not buy another as the support from them was very poor and and has caused me major headaches just this a simple upgrade.
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