Laptop's gone silly.

[Frederic54]

Re: Laptop's gone silly.

Holy Shit 119 processes ? :/
Anyway, the fridge was a really bad idea, if you haven't cleaned it up in a long time, that might be dust in the fan.
I also recommend you to save what you need and format your disk to give your laptop a second life

[supermousie]

Re: Laptop's gone silly.

As stated in the OP and my post following the OP, I killed most of the processes, the general heatsink area is dust-free, and I didn't actually pop it in the fridge.

svchost.exe is taking up >9000 of my megahurtz. When I killed it, the core temperature dropped about 20°C. Still too hot though. :/
I'll apply thermal paste sometime next week, but until then, the laptop stays off. In the freezer.

Maybe if all fails, I'll get a solid desktop and migrate everything over...

[Wartime]

Re: Laptop's gone silly.

yeah that would be ah good idea puting new thermal paste on it...besides that i wouldn't know cause i don't use laptops anymore...to much shit inside them and also i hate putting them back together =p

[who_cares973]

Re: Laptop's gone silly.

whens the last time you cleaned out the fan? that might be your problem. take out fan blow and watch as all this dust comes out~

[Cavernio]

Re: Laptop's gone silly.

Granted I'm really not good at this type of thing and the computers I've owned have always been low end, and I've never run used a quad core, but I've never seen processor activity quite so low. Is it normal for 2 of them to basically not be doing anything? Even the first one's activity is kinda low...and also all over the place. I would be worried it's infected.

[fido123]

Re: Laptop's gone silly.

Is it normal for 2 of them to basically not be doing anything?

Yeah it's normal


Your CPU really isn't running dangerously hot, and seems to be around a safe level for a working CPU, but if your fans going on full blast. Anybody telling you you have to get a new laptop is a retard and shouldn't be offering advice if they don't know what they're talking about. Applying the thermal paste wouldn't be a bad idea but you're computer seems pretty new and this happens "all of a sudden" so I wouldn't really put my money down on that. Try these couple of things keeping in mind laptops are suppose to be a little hot, but the fan shouldn't always be in overdrive:


1) Put your laptop in a position where all fan openings aren't blocked of up against anything after you turned it off and let it cool down for ~10 minutes. Turn it on and stay logged off for ~10 minutes. Are the fans constantly going? If not log in and wait ~10 minutes. Are teh fans constantly going then?

2) Are you running XP? 7?. Google what processes and services are required for Windows to keep running. You might have some shittily coded software running. Instead of killing these processes from task manager, press "Windows Key + R" and type "msconfig" into the box and press "Enter". Go to the services tab and disable all services you don't need (will need a separate Google query from processes), then go to startup and disable everything you don't need. Restart your computer and look at how many processes you have. I have 63 with 4 applications open, I havn't cleaned up in a while, and I have a couple of things like Steam and Origin running. ~60 processes is fairly healthy.

3) As a LAST option next to getting a new laptop or even opening it up depending on how comfortable you are with this, reinstall Windows (not just by putting in the disk while windows is on and telling it to install). If you get to this point and you don't know how to do it back up all your data (because this will wipe out everything) and tell us.

[OrganisM]

Re: Laptop's gone silly.

I think I'll go for the smug mockery ;D

[supermousie]

Re: Laptop's gone silly.

Cleared up and disabled ~30 processes. Average temperature is down to 50°C. Around 20°C above normal idling but whatever, it's an improvement.

I keep my laptop on a table and it used to run at 35°C at idle and ~70°C when running a 3d game.

While in the BIOS menu, it maxed out at 45°C. I set the fans to stay on at all times because I like a cool laptop.

Arctic Cooling MX-4, anyone?

[fido123]

Re: Laptop's gone silly.

I wouldn't advise having your fans on at all times since you'll wear them out far faster. If killing processes is working keep at it. When's the last time you reinstalled Windows btw?

[supermousie]

Re: Laptop's gone silly.

Killing processes seems to be working, but it idles at 50-60 no matter what I do now, even in safe mode.

I have never reinstalled Windows on this laptop. It didn't come with a disk @_@

[UserNameGoesHere]

Re: Laptop's gone silly.

Yeah unfortunately more and more computer manufacturers are being cheap and not providing even recovery disks anymore. Forget having legitimate OS install disk and driver disks, some of them won't even give you recovery disk(s) these days.

Do you have an HP by chance?

[supermousie]

Re: Laptop's gone silly.

How did you know?

It's a low end Compaq Presario.

Hewlett-Packard Compaq Presario CQ62 251-TU
Intel Core i3 350M Arrandale 32nm @ 2.27GHz
HP 1425 mobo
Windows 7 SP1

[UserNameGoesHere]

Re: Laptop's gone silly.

HP is really bad about not giving you any disks.

Okay you should probably have a "recovery partition" on there somewhere (Stupid as hell idea but, hey, I'm not HP. Seriously retarded idea though.)

Do you have a CD or DVD burner, specifically one which came bundled with the computer?

[supermousie]

Re: Laptop's gone silly.

Of course. So I guess I'll be burning something in the near future.

Agreed, the recovery partition is a rubbish idea. Wasting disk space, and either way, a ruined hard-drive isn't going to benefit.
It's under D:\

[UserNameGoesHere]

Re: Laptop's gone silly.

There should be a recovery disk creator program on there somewhere. It might say startup disk or HP recovery or something along those lines. Should be either easily spotted on your Start menu somewhere or in something like HP Tools or something like that.

Basically it uses the "recovery partition" to burn disks but it only works with the exact burner the computer was bundled with, and only can be used once. You can work around the "only use once" restriction if you google it enough and figure out what things you need to delete/modify/etc... (it's an artificial restriction HP places on you.) but suffice to say once you use the program it will try to prevent you from using it a second time.

That disk set should then, theoretically, serve as recovery disks and you be able to do a clean install from them.

Why does HP make things unnecessarily difficult for their customers? I don't know.

Set those disks aside somewhere once you've done that (if you manage to do that) and first try the recovery options within the machine itself. Pause/Break key upon bootup and quickly read what to press to enter recovery mode. Reboot and press whatever key it told you and try to recover from the recovery partition that way.

If that doesn't work, then you could try using the recovery disks at this point.

Either way, if it is a hardware, and not software, problem, this won't fix it. This'll only help with a software problem.

Keep us informed as you progress.