Overheating after new hard drive and clean install

I've done a clean install on a new hard drive on a Sony Vaio VPCC and am having overheating problems (the laptop keeps turning off when it gets too hot, so I haven't even completed Windows updates).

Just wondered if anyone had any suggestions. It's happened twice now with the new drive installed - once when I had cloned the old drive onto it, and now with the clean install. When I put the old drive back in, it doesn't overheat. Everything is clean as well.

The original drive was 320GB 5400rpm 8mb cache, the new one is 500GB 5400rpm 16mb cache. I'm just wondering if Sony put some piece of firmware on the original hard drive or something.

What's installed at the moment is - Windows 7 Service Pack 1, I let Windows install the drivers (although later installed the Nvidia driver as the VGA one stretched the screen - to see if that helped with the overheating, but it didn't).

The original factory install had Intel Matrix Storage Manager, which I don't have now - would that make a difference?

Hello hazel123,

Is the laptop clean and you can feel hot air coming out of the exhaust vent ?

Hi again David. Yes I cleaned dust out recently with blown air and you can feel the hot air coming out.

I'm wondering if there is some compatibility thing with the drive and Sony. It gets really hot but when I put the old drive back in, it didn't do that.

I've read some people have issues with Windows Update where it's uses a lot of CPU.
Open Task Manager and see what your CPU usage is with the new HD when WU is running.
Just guessing here, but maybe the CPU is causing the overheating because of WU.

You can also download and run the portable version of HWMonitor from here:
DOWNLOADING HWMONITOR_1.28.ZIP | CPUID

Then you could compare temps with the old HD and new HD.

whs, your link for Speccy is bad.
I agree, Speccy is a good tool, the portable version and installer are available here:
Speccy - Builds

Thanks - I hadn't thought of that. I had Speccy on the old drive. I've put the old drive back in again now. Nice and cool again.

If I get chance tomorrow I'll swap them round again and see what's causing the heat. I had something similar happen on another Sony laptop - an older Vista one - it got very hot with Windows 7 64 bit on but seemed to be ok with 32 bit on it. But don't want to put 32 bit on my main laptop as I have 8GB ram I want to use.

I've been reading round Sony forums and there is mention of using a "Standard Format" hard drive rather than an "Advanced Format" drive - but I think that was so recovery discs would work. It seems there are limitations on what drives are compatible with some Sony laptops. I've given up on it for now. I had the new drive in a 10" netbook for a month and it worked perfectly well in there so I'll put it back in there and try and find a more compatible drive.

The overheating was all the time, not just when running Windows Update, so it seemed to be just running too hot generally. Could have fried steak on it.