On Sat, May 02, 2009 at 10:56:59PM -0400, ADITYA KRISHNAN wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I have a HP Pavillion dv2000 laptop running Fedora 9. I notice that running
> it for more than an hour causes my laptop to overheat. The temperature
> screenlet displays the CPU temperature to be 80C,  which I believe is pretty
> high and I do not run any heavy applications.
> 
> I read on some previous thread that appending "acpi=on" on the kernel line
> of grub.conf solves this problem. But it has made no difference.
> Let me know is there any particular software i can download for preventing
> this overheating.
> Thanks.
> 
> Aditya

Propping it up so it gets good airflow is a good idea or a cooling pad but 
really there are only a few likely possibilities. One you've got it on your lap 
and your blocking the exhaust. Two it has a hardware problem, got hit by a 
power surge, condensation on the internal components, faulty hardware, the list 
goes on. Three you have pets, are in a dusty environment, or have had it for 
several years without any sort of maintenance and there is a carpet growing on 
the heatsink.

The first possibility is unlikely I think because removing it from your lap and 
placing it on a flat surface should cause the temp to drop within a few 
minutes. Are the fans kicking in? They should be going like mad at that temp.

The second sounds very likely considering how hot its getting and given that 
certain laptop models are notorious for this sort of thing, you don't say if 
its shutting down or locking up on you, I would guess and hope that it is 
shutting down.

 The third possibility is also very common, I have taken apart more than a few 
laptops and removed built up pet hair and dust from the heatsink. It should be 
shutting itself down in this case. 
If it has a hardware problem its days are numbered and you should prepare a 
small service and let it make its peace with the great 01 or 10 on the net :^) 
because its going to the great bit bucket called /dev/null probably sooner than 
later at that temperature. Replacing laptop motherboards is expensive. 

If your not afraid of taking it apart then you should because if it does have 
dust and dander built up then its going to get worse as time passes and if 
you've caught it early enough then you can fix it and move on. I should note 
however that disassembling a laptop is not for the faint of heart, its far from 
the cakewalk of a desktop machine. In addition there is the distinct 
possibility, as with any electronic device, that you might damage the board if 
you aren't properly grounded.

There are a couple of other things that it could be but I consider them 
unlikely because if the sensors are lying ( a miscalibration )then simply 
touching it would tell you as at 80 C , about 170 F , you won't be able to keep 
your hand on it for long. Lastly this might(very unlikely in my opinon) be an 
acceptable operating temp for your laptop, if it is then its at the extreme end 
of acceptable that's for sure and it would have to be under a heavy load but 
you say this is not the case.

In any case I would avoid using it till you've figured out which it is because, 
if it isn't already permanently damaged it soon will be if you keep it running 
at that temperature. You could try pegging the cpu to its lowest speed with the 
cpu frequency scaling applet, this may help a bit.
-- 
"Any fool can know. The point is to understand" --Albert Einstein

Bored??
http://fiction.wikia.com/wiki/Fuqwit1.0

http://fiction.wikia.com/wiki/Coding_the_Magic_into_the_Eight_Ball

-- 
fedora-list mailing list
[email protected]
To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines

Reply via email to