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Windows 7 RTM Overheating Problem
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
Last edited by jedwards; 12 Oct 2009 at 11:56. Reason: fix typos