Laptop oveheats after W7 upgrade

[Japatti]

Hi,
I'm hoping somebody can help with a problem I'm getting since upgrading my laptop from Vista to 7.
Laptop has allways been faultless before the OS upgrade (clean install). After the upgrade yes it runs quicker but it overheats and shuts down. -The laptop is getting hotter than usual and depending on CPU demand will just shut down, the only warning being the fan speed increasing just before it dies. I have tried the following;

1. Cleaned out the fan and air dusted all under the cover. -even tried freezer spray to the bottom cover!!!
2. restored all the drivers I had backed up before the instal.
3. checked the latency on the system (the computer is mainly used for Music) APCI.sys sits high on the demand list and its latency increases as CPU heats. -Not sure if this is the problem, can find no reliable info as to if I can stop it running (not listed in the services
4. removed battery and ran the laptop. -still shuts down and runs red hot!
5. checked the Acer website for driver. It only has drivers listed for Vista and XP (not tried these as yet).

Was thinking of updating all drivers to latest using a driver update program, had allready done the CPU update but to be honest I have had problems before with the updated drivers causing more problems than they solve on other PC's.

Seems to be a lot about Win 7 causing overheat problems but have not seen any solutions, Can anybody help me before my processor goes into melt down?

Many thanks,

Matt

 

[OldMX]

Try flashing to latest bios and performing a clean install. After the clean install get latest driveres for everything.

 

[bassfisher6522]

How long have you had the laptop? The CPU itself could be going bad. To verifiy this, and I know this is a pain in the butt, reinstall Vista and check CPU for overheating. If it's ok do as OldMX suggested re-install 7, go to each hardware's website from laptop and get latest driver from them, not from the make of laptop...ie HP, Dell (those are just the drivers they used when making the laptop and not the latest). Then check for over heating.

 

[Japatti]

Hi,

Thanks for you advice.

I took the advice from OLDmx above, found the latest BIOS and installed that. -bit hairy as the computer seemed to overheat and shut of near the end of the instal! -when it did come back up (had to remove power and battery for a short time to get it to come back up) I reloaded W7.
This seemed to sort the problem out. left it for a week and all was well (or so I thought).
I then reloaded McAfee and a few other programs that I use, -no where near restored to what I used to have installed and guess what?
After prolonged use or even just a short spell of downloads the overheat problem has returned! -It can get red hot within half hour!
-It is not related to running Traktor (a DJ audio program that will use a large amount of memory as it plays two or more MP3's simultaniously) as it has even crashed just running the bundled windows media player and internet explorer.
I have emailed Microsoft and sent the MSDT results to them but does anybody have any other ideas I can try???

Thanks,

Matt

 

[pebbly]

Hi Japatti,welcome to the forums, you could try a 3rd party fan control software like speedfan Download SpeedFan - Access temperature sensor in your computer or i8kgui Dell Inspiron Inspiron/Latitude/Precision fan control these will not cure the problem but will enable you to maintain a reasonable temperature and not have as many heat related shutdowns, The second option would be to clean the old thermal compound off the CPU/GPU and add some fresh such as Articsilver 5 (as5) or Artic ceramique 3 (Ac3) Arctic Silver Incorporated - Home#

 

[Shootist]

Something in the system, Win 7, other program or BIOS setting is stopping either the fan/s to turn on at a lower temperature or setting the CPU into FULL power mode all the time instead of using Speed Step to throttle the CPU speed.

Along with this the CPU heat sink could be failing which would stop the movement of heat away from the CPU to whatever radiator the fans blow across to cool down the CPU.

 

[fafhrd]

You may need to throttle back your system to address the overheating problem and find the root cause. This can be done through the power plan settings. These would be temporary and fully reversible adjustments until the source of the instability can be found.

Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Power Options

select Power Saver and Change Advanced power settings

On the dialog, select Processor power Management, system cooling policy, and set all alternatives present to ACTIVE, (NOT PASSIVE)

select Maximum Processor state and limit it to 80%, and see how the system responds. You may need to adjust down more until the system reaches stability.

I think a reboot may be necessary to make sure that the changes are effective.

Download the sysinternals suite of utilities - we are interested in Process Explorer - but the other utilities are pretty useful too, and worth having:

http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/SysinternalsSuite.zip

Second time today I post this Link:

Mark's Webcasts

Process explorer is a powerful task manager replacement or extender, which allows you to trace which processes and subprocesses, dependencies and threads are using up the processor and memory resources. The video presentations will show how the utility may be used to good effect.

 

[Japatti]

Cheers guys.

I have re installed Win 7 64 bit as my Acer is 64 bit ready (don't know why but though it might help. Had nothing to lose).. also have changed the power settings as per fafrhd's email above. That really has helped to keep the temperature more managable. Now it does not trip and it seems the fan will cut in earlier. -though still seems to get hotter, quicker, than usual. -I have not tried the sys internals suite yet. Will try running tomorrow but have tried running a latency monitor program earlier. ACPI.sys sits head and shoulders above any other driver in its processor drain. It runs every 15mS for a duration of 2000uS. Well above all the other driver or processes that run on the computer. I can even see the core temperature peak a bit when it runs too! -could this be part of the problem???? can it be updated or removed?

Will try the sys internals suite and see if that sheds any light. Also will renew the thermal compound this week, if the computer survives the cider my good lady just knocked over it! (so far it has only claimed the glide pad.......)
mind you that extra heat could be usefull in drying it out in this instance! .

Matt

I will check back with the results. Again thanks for the support.
MUCH better than the Acer\Windows support I have had thus far!!!!

 

[Japatti]

fafhrd

"Download the sysinternals suite of utilities - we are interested in Process Explorer - but the other utilities are pretty useful too, and worth having:"


......In Sys internals, process explorer system idle process always remains in the top 5. between 40 -80% CPU process power. Private bytes =0. working set = 24 Guess thats telling me the period that nothing is happening? or else its a massive black hole of nothingness! what should I be looking for?

 

[fafhrd]

What you are seeing is ACPI.sys responding, rather than the other way around.

ACPI Automatic Configuration Power Interface is responding to the high core temperature and throttling back the processor /increasing fan speed - that's why it seems to be working hard. It interfaces between the chipset drivers and the power features in Windows.

we need to see what else is occupying the processor, not the system idle process.

Just briefly tell you my experience - intel chipset, AtomN450 1.66Ghz processor on a Packard Bell netbook. Triple boot Windows 7 starter (preinstalled), Linux Mint 8 (up-to-date patches), Windows XP SP3.

Hot as Hades on Windows 7, cool on the other two systems.

Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology\IAStorDataMgrSvc.exe was the problem, using about 15-25% of the CPU constantly. Of course any other demands on the processor put the usage up to 70-98% and running near 70deg C.

Why was this executable a problem? It is a SATA RAID storage control manager. I have a single hard drive. I set the service to manual from automatic, and the Windows 7 cooled to within normal temperatures and CPU usage. There's more, but later...

As you have seen, the process explorer presents a lot of information - services in pink, applications in blue, roughly speaking. I suggested looking at the video presentations by the Author - Mark Russinovich - to get an Idea how the utility may be used.

Briefly - it is very late here - double click on almost anything in process explorer and the CPU and other resources used by the object can be seen in fine detail. You can also search for the offending program online, or trace it to it's disk location to examine the file properties and whether there are reports of problems with it. Processes can be stopped and restarted, and memory dumps can be made.

That's all for now, I'll be back tomorrow.

You could post the process explorer screen, if you wish.

 

[reedy]

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....

 

[Shootist]

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.

 

[reedy]

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.

Very true! but mine will overheat on my desk without my cooling station so I have to carry it around with me and use it all the time......

 

[Shootist]

Very true! but mine will overheat on my desk without my cooling station so I have to carry it around with me and use it all the time......

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.

 

[Japatti]

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!

 

[dearuser]

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.

 

[MacGyvr]

Hi,

Thanks for you advice.

I took the advice from OLDmx above, found the latest BIOS and installed that. -bit hairy as the computer seemed to overheat and shut of near the end of the instal! -when it did come back up (had to remove power and battery for a short time to get it to come back up) I reloaded W7.
This seemed to sort the problem out. left it for a week and all was well (or so I thought).
I then reloaded McAfee and a few other programs that I use, -no where near restored to what I used to have installed and guess what?
After prolonged use or even just a short spell of downloads the overheat problem has returned! -It can get red hot within half hour!
-It is not related to running Traktor (a DJ audio program that will use a large amount of memory as it plays two or more MP3's simultaniously) as it has even crashed just running the bundled windows media player and internet explorer.
I have emailed Microsoft and sent the MSDT results to them but does anybody have any other ideas I can try???

Thanks,

Matt

Mistake #1? Installing McAfee.

 

[shivatandav]

Mistake #1? Installing McAfee.

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 .. 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

 

[Japatti]

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.