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Sunday, April 13, 2014

"The system was shut down due to a critical thermal event."

So says the event log.  And when I looked at the ventilation fan opening on the bottom of the case, it had a good excuse -- lots of dust.  Perhaps I will buy one of those USB-powered cooling fans, too.  As long as I don't need liquid nitrogen.
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6 comments:

  1. Rick CApril 13, 2014 at 3:35 PM

    If your computer's on the floor and you have pets, take it up off the floor--that does a LOT to keep pet hair out.

    You can get a filter for the fan intakes, which will help, but then again, you can just open the case and blast it with compressed air every once in a while, too.

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  2. Clayton CramerApril 13, 2014 at 9:21 PM

    Not down on the floor, but the cat's fur gets into everything! I also ordered one of these USB-powered notebook cooling fans. It was $6.99, and I figure that should help.

    I never had this problem with Windows XP. I wonder if Windows 7 has the motherboard working harder.

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  3. SigivaldApril 14, 2014 at 11:14 AM

    Also, blow the vents out with compressed air, assuming you're unwilling to open the case up completely to give it a thorough cleaning.

    There's going to be plenty of dust inside the thing where you can't see it, impeding heat transfer and airflow.

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  4. Rick CApril 15, 2014 at 9:19 AM

    Sigivald's right: I've taken laptops apart and they do get full of crud. (I forgot you were using a laptop when I made my first comment.) If you're not afraid of working with a screwdriver it's not hard to take the case off, usually, and you can usually google the model of the laptop and "service manual" to find a PDF of step-by-step instructions on how to disassemble it fully.

    7 probably DOES do more than XP. For that reason you should strongly consider just getting a new laptop, preferably a Core i5 or better, because it'll run a lot better. (Unless your current one isn't terribly old or is fairly powerful...I can't remember the specs.) And if you DO get a new machine consider Windows 8. It's really not worse than 7. It's just _different_, and people ALWAYS gripe when Microsoft changes how Windows works. Having been using 8 for a year and a half or so now, I think I like the start screen significantly better than the Vista/7 start menu.

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  5. Clayton CramerApril 15, 2014 at 9:59 AM

    In spite of being a 2005 era dual core system, it is surprisingly fast! I posted the Windows Experience index a while back, and I was astonished to see that it was comparable to a lot of current notebooks, perhaps because I have a hybrid disk drive in it, and it was, even when new, a high-end HP notebook.

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  6. Rick CApril 15, 2014 at 11:27 AM

    Interesting. Well, if it's fast enough for you, then fine. I can't do a desktop-to-laptop comparison for you or a laptop-to-laptop one, but I have at work a 3 GHz Pentium from about 2010, and at home I have an Ivy Bridge core i5 with a base clock of 3.4GHz, and I can tell you that the extra speed and the extra hyperthreads make a HUGE difference.

    More and more, you want as many cores as possible (cores being better than hyperthreads.) If I had north of $700 or so to buy a laptop I'd get an i7, not an i5 or i3.

    I think that even goes with Linux. The dual-core desktop I'm using at home right at the moment has 132 processes.

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