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Experiencing a strange CPU overheating problem with my laptop. It seems to be struggling with basic shit it shouldn't have a problem with (and never did before). Even opening new tabs in a browser spikes the temp and the fan spools up. Watching videos in 720p or above and the fan runs constantly (not at full speed) - it never used to behave like this, but thinking about it now I've only had this issue since running W10. This machine was built for 7 so some stuff doesn't work since the changeover because Toshiba didn't release an update - but that doesn't matter because it was all Tosh specific stuff I never used anyway, like the eco button etc.

Core i7 processor, 16GB RAM, SSD's, dedicated NVidea GPU. I'm not experiencing issues with performance in a speed sense, it's a fast machine even by today's standards. It's just this overheating thing when doing basic stuff. I've pulled it apart and cleaned out the exhaust, which is now spotless. The fan seems to be operating correctly, no funny noises of doom so I can't see the point in changing that, heatsink is undamaged too. I'm thinking about changing the thermal paste, but I can't really see it helping (just grasping at straws).

Right now I have this tab open in Chrome, and another tab playing a video on YT. The fan is running at low speed (it never used to run at all doing this) but if I switch to the other tab where the video will be onscreen as opposed to here where I'm just listening to it, the CPU will instantly hit about 70C and the fan speed will increase. Turning the res down from 1080p to 720p will reduce the load and the fan will slow down. But the point is this machine shouldn't be taxed running 1080p video. Back when I first got it (2013) the fan wouldn't run at all playing Q3 with everything on maximum, it now does

Normally I can just fix shit my self, I know my way around a PC, but I'm a bit stuck on this one. Anyone had any similar experiences?

Is it possible to re-install the cpu with some new thermal paste? Oh wait...you mentioned that. If you have some TIM around it might be worth a try.

GR1T wrote:Is it possible to re-install the cpu with some new thermal paste? Oh wait...you mentioned that. If you have some TIM around it might be worth a try.

I'm going to give it a shot on the offchance. I can't imagine it working but seeing as I can't think of anything else to try I'll have to give it a whirl.

SD

Where do I begin. Lets go with this.

You have two options. Option 1: go back to Win 7. Yes, I know that's a bit of a task, but it will solve your overheating problem.
Plus, you wouldn't get me to use Win 10 even if you paid me to. It's renouned for being a resource hog.

Option 2: Do some searching for disabling Windows Services that don't need to be running at Startup. As well as any you've installed.
The average running processess at Startup for Win 10 are around 120. That's insane. All those running put a strain on your CPU.
Eliminate as many as you can. Plus, since you have 16 gb of memory, I would suggest lowering your pagefile to 20mb. In an essence
the real reason you need a page file is for a dumpfile(BSOD). 20 is more than plenty. If you were on a Desktop I would suggest
removing the Hibernation file as well. That would clog up your SSD. But your on a laptop, which should be on. But if you
change your 'ways' of keeping programs open to closing everything before you close the lid, you could remove it.
I have a website the explains how to turn off unnessessary Services at Startup if you want.

I'll wait for your reply,


p.s. Hibernation uses up to 75% of installed memory

Where do I begin

That was my initial thought! I've never really ran into this problem before, other than rogue shit using 100% RAM, removal of said rogue shit solves.

You have two options. Option 1: go back to Win 7. Yes, I know that's a bit of a task, but it will solve your overheating problem.
Plus, you wouldn't get me to use Win 10 even if you paid me to. It's renouned for being a resource hog.

I could do that, it's no problem to do it. My only reluctance is W7 (afaik) is no longer supported so at some point I'd be forced to return to W10 when 7 stops functioning properly, browsing errors etc. I wasn't aware of 10 being a resource hog, I always fancied it as a W7 "lite" because it lacks a lot of 7's features, aero theme etc. Don't mind being wrong on that though, I never look at things like that for my own machines because they all have impressive firepower even by todays standards.

Option 2: Do some searching for disabling Windows Services that don't need to be running at Startup. As well as any you've installed.
The average running processess at Startup for Win 10 are around 120. That's insane. All those running put a strain on your CPU.

Very familiar with this issue, when I have people contact me about "slow" problems it's one of the first things I check. At the moment there are 3 Apps running (Chrome with 5 tabs open, Taskmgr and W/Exp) -

Background Processes - 56. None of these are rogue
Windows Processes - 89. Haven't checked them all but doubt any are rogue if they're identified as Windows processes

This translates to a real-time load of -

CPU - 10%
Mem - 27% (I'm streaming HD video right now albeit in a tab I'm not looking at, so just listening)
Disk - 0%
Network - 2%
GPU - 0%

I would suggest lowering your pagefile to 20mb. In an essence
the real reason you need a page file is for a dumpfile(BSOD). 20 is more than plenty

I set it to 25MB ages ago, would reducing it further provide much of a result? Happy to give it a stab.

If you were on a Desktop I would suggest
removing the Hibernation file as well. That would clog up your SSD. But your on a laptop, which should be on.

I should have been more clear in my OP. This is running two SSD's, one has the OS and other stuff that insists on being with the OS (so minimal space used) and the other sits there as a partitioned drive for storage. Split into storage and media. Main SSD (Local Disk C) only has 57GB on it. Other one is irrelevant because I pulled it out for shits and it made no difference.

But if you change your 'ways' of keeping programs open to closing everything before you close the lid, you could remove it.

Funnily enough, I've always done this. I never use hibernate/standby/sleep etc as I've always had desktops (this is my only laptop) and it's either off or it's on and in use. Also, lid always stays open now because the hinges have pulled the screws through the bottom of the chassis so I leave it open to save bashing the speakers (the speakers sit on top of the hinges so closing the lid, whilst it can be done, puts pressure on the speakers, and as they're Harman Kardon I'd rather not break them )

I have a website the explains how to turn off unnessessary Services at Startup if you want.

Sure I'll take a look at it? Well I mean I know how to turn them off but if your site has a list of services to look out for that would be cool.

The whole thing is just weird, as I've had this laptop a few years I know what it should be able to handle, it's never even remotely struggled. Back when I first bought it I was playing COD4 on max everything and the fan would only spool up to a light whisper. Now it goes mental just watching fucking YouTube! I don't know if you're familiar with OBS or not, I use that too and it shouldn't be a strain on this machine, but it really doesn't like it these days.

I think maybe the best suggestion so far is your first, and my suspected one anyway, which is to try it back on W7 or at least reformat and fresh install 10

Thanks for the reply man

Try fresh W7-10 install, doesn't matter which. Forget processes and services for now, just default install and then observe idle temps. Make sure any required drivers are installed as well, especially with older Windows. Both CPU and GPU can increase overall heat, but idle temps should always be normal. What exactly is normal depends on hardware, check online what other people are getting when idle and when under max load. Of course, this will only help if the problem is software-related.

Also, you could try Linux, like Mint or Ubuntu, or some more lightweight version like Xubuntu (XFCE based) or Lubuntu (LXDE / LXQT based). Those are great for older hardware, however, your hardware should handle Windows and normal Linux without a problem. More info: https://itsfoss.com/best-linux-desktop-environments/

SD wrote:My only reluctance is W7 (afaik) is no longer supported so at some point I'd be forced to return to W10 when 7 stops functioning properly, browsing errors etc

This is a fallacy SD.

I've been using Windows OS's since Sept 95 ( Windows 95 ). I had a sister-in-law back then whom I bought from the company she worked for. The most valuable advice she gave me
was, turn off Windows Update. Her philosophy was ( and mine now too ) "if it ain't broke don't fix it. And with each release ( Windows 2000, XP and now 7 Ultimate x64 )( I bypassed
98 and Vista for good reasons ) as you well know. Each of those OS's had no updates. I can honestly tell you, I've had one ( yes 1 ) BSOD. But it was my fault. I dl/ed a movie that caused
a video driver issue. I redl/ed that movie from another site and no problems. As far as any of the OS's having issues ( functioning properly, browsing errors etc ), not one had any issues
without the Updates. I've read that for some, Updates could cause problems. PERIOD! Turn off Updates!!!!!!! If you do decide to switch back to 7, make sure your NOT
connected to the Internet even if requires you to shutoff your modem. That way, the Updates don't get installed on installation. And get yourself a Firewall ( I use Comodo Free ). I could
send you ( through here ) Comodo 5.1 which is suited for Win 7 ( all editions ).

SD wrote:I set it to 25MB ages ago, would reducing it further provide much of a result?

No 16 is minimum but 20 just incase you have more that one BSOD!

Here's that website incase you want to see if turning off Services helps:

https://www.askvg.com/beginners-guide-to-configure-windows-10-services/

I'll wait your reply,

Yeah the thing with the "upgrading" (cough) of the OS due to it no longer functioning properly was based on my experience with XP. I stuck to it like shit to a blanket on a few machines and all were fine until relatively recently when I started getting errors. IIRC a lot of browsing errors, saying SSL certs were out of date etc, update browser, can't update browser because it refuses to update and work properly on XP. I'm sure I could have worked around things like that, but I decided to bite the bullet and shove 7 on those instead. Started happening with other people's machines too so I did the same there.

Dyn, yeah I think fresh OS is the thing to try for now at least. Probably do that over the weekend. Provided it doesn't catch fire and burn my house down in the meantime
Never tried Linux, I've heard certain web services don't work properly on it or you have to mess around with it to get basic stuff working. Could be BS of course, but I've never really found a reason to try it.

SD wrote:Dyn, yeah I think fresh OS is the thing to try for now at least. Probably do that over the weekend. Provided it doesn't catch fire and burn my house down in the meantime
Never tried Linux, I've heard certain web services don't work properly on it or you have to mess around with it to get basic stuff working. Could be BS of course, but I've never really found a reason to try it.

Linux is much more user-friendly today, most of those statements are urban legends from the early years of Linux. Certain things require either installing package(s) or a few commands to run, it all depends what you need to install, but popular distros have tons of guides and big communities.

Try Linux Mint live without installing:
https://linuxmint.com/download.php

Use Rufus to create boot USB or optical media: https://rufus.ie/
(default options should be OK in most cases)

There are a lot more Linux live distros which can be tested this way, without installation. Most of them will save changes to the USB, and depending on your hardware, you may want to make sure proprietary graphics driver is installed, especially for gaming, but it is not required to just try out the OS.

Hint: you can use live Linux for recovery purposes as well. By default virtually all of them will be able to read files from Windows partitions, but you also have editions which are equipped with more advanced tools, just look up Linux data recovery distros. Those will vary from user-friendly to more technical like SystemRescueCd, where they don't even start graphic interface by default (use startx command for that, if you really must).

Gentleman, please excuse my ignorance. I just spent the last hour and a half listening to a lesson on You Tube about Linux for beginners.
After checking my hardware and software to see if any of the aforementioned would be compatable with Linux, I got the shock of my life.
My question is this: if I'm the typical PC user, which I believe I am, who in their right mind would want to use a Linux based system.

Here are my reasons:

My Motherboard ( GigaByte ) doesn't support Linux - no chipset drivers - no LAN drivers - no USB drivers - useless
My Soundcard ( X-Fi Titanium 7.1 with speakers ) doesn't support Linux - useless
My Videocard ( Nvidia 1050ti 4g ) does have drivers but, the GUI is basic - no advanced settings - useless
My Media Players ( MPC-HC - SMPlayer ) MPC-HC doesn't support Linux - SMPlayer does but with limited functionality - useless
My Monitor ( Viewsonic 24" 1080p ) doesn't support Linux - no colour Profiles - useless

And my last reason is this: I have multiple hard drives. From listening to the video it says that once you install Linux on any system,
you can't uninstall it. It might even corrupt any partitions you have on that said hard drive. Makes no sense to install Linux at all.

Can someone please give me a reason why and who would use Linux.

You can try a live distro, there are many of them, some more friendly, some less. Stuff you listed should be supported.

Dyn, with all due respect, I wouldn't have posted this without checking all of them. Only one was ( SMPlayer ).
All the rest do not support from Linux. Please explain what market and who would use a Linux system.

You could simply download any popular distribution and try it out, it will detect hardware and there are plenty of apps available.
Some of the most user-friendly are listed here:
https://itsfoss.com/best-linux-beginners/
https://www.slant.co/topics/5157/~linux-distro-for-beginners

A lot of people use Linux these days, it is not only for tech companies or hackers anymore. Free to install with free updates, greater security, easier to use than in the past and multiple free office packages are the main reasons it is gaining popularity. Then retail stores offer hardware for less when it comes with Linux, since there is no Windows license to pay, which also introduces it to many new people.

When it comes to spying and telemetry, it is either totally absent or there is some basic telemetry which can be easily turned off, in contrast to Windows where you either require Enterprise LTSB/LTSC, or at least Pro, to turn off certain things - here various 3rd party tools like Blackbird or O&O ShutUp10 can be great. Some companies are very sensitive about this and they opt for Linux instead.

In general Windows is still widely used for desktop and desktop gaming, but this also is changing check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_games and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_gaming. Increased marketshare motivates more developers to also support Linux these days, albeit it's not big enough yet.

I run MenuetOS exclusively [wiki], so that's that, don't care much about Windows vs Linux. The best and most secure is BSD anyway which is Linux's Linux, either FreeBSD, OpenBSD or NetBSD, or even DragonflyBSD. I did use FreeBSD some time ago, it's great!

Note: there is one thing about the Blackbird, it will also turn off some useful services like W32Time, which synchronizes system clock with time servers, but that can re-enabled under Services.

Can't uninstall it? Seriously? That sounds odd to me.

Any Linux live edition won't be installed, and they save changes to the USB. Great for system rescue or to try it out. Of course, installed Linux will require a partition of its own, with optional swap partition, but you can always delete all of that and install Windows later. Windows installer can do it and it will also make sure any boot record is overwritten, even more, while Linux usually respects other operating systems and will offer to boot them, Windows will overwrite everything and boot only Windows in a typical Microsoft way.

Relevant guides:
https://itsfoss.com/guide-install-linux-mint-16-dual-boot-windows/
https://opensource.com/article/18/5/dual-boot-linux

One more thing, you can test and run any Linux inside a virtual machine, like VMware or VirtualBox. Either install it there from .iso or get some pre-installed edition.

SD wrote:Can't uninstall it? Seriously? That sounds odd to me.

My bad SD. It didn't dawn on me untill I read what you said. As far as my limited knowledge is concerned, no OS can be 'uninstalled'.
From what I understand though, you can either overwrite it or, delete it. But your all missing my point. If I'm the average Windows user,
and the components I have, why would anyone want to install an OS that doesn't support the hardware or software. Could someone make
some sense from this????

fallout wrote:If I'm the average Windows user,
and the components I have, why would anyone want to install an OS that doesn't support the hardware or software. Could someone make
some sense from this????

Well, if that in fact is the case then installing it (and having be any use as an OS) would seem pointless. But then it does seem strange that a well known OS wouldn't support standard hardware like you mentioned in your post, that would seriously limit the market for it. Granted I'm doing no research here and I'm making you do all the work but are you sure your components aren't supported? I can understand if some odd shit isn't supported but everything you posted is pretty normal stuff.

I don’t understand why switching to a new Windows when everything works well on the seven?

Here's my conclusion on using a Linux OS.

fallout wrote:My Motherboard ( GigaByte ) doesn't support Linux - no chipset drivers - no LAN drivers - no USB drivers
My Soundcard ( X-Fi Titanium 7.1 with speakers ) doesn't support Linux
My Videocard ( Nvidia 1050ti 4g ) does have drivers but, the GUI is basic - no advanced settings
My Media Players ( MPC-HC - SMPlayer ) MPC-HC doesn't support Linux - SMPlayer does but with limited functionality
My Monitor ( Viewsonic 24" 1080p ) doesn't support Linux - no colour Profiles

After spending the better part of 48 hours searching for what I wrote above, all hold true. My Mobo manufacturer doesn't support any Linux OS. And after searching my ass off,
I could not find any site that would have any of the items I would need.

My Soundcard, Creative, does have a ( very mind you ) limited driver package that basically installs only the Audio drivers. No advanced settings that would enhance the card's capabilities.

My videocard ( Nvidia ) does have drivers but, the same applies here as it does for my soundcard. ( No advanced settings that would enhance the card's capabilities )

My Media player. Same thing ( does but with limited functionality )

My Monitor. Same ( no colour Profiles )

The point I'm trying to make is, with Windows it's as simple as point and click. No need to search your ass off trying to make the hardware work.
It's the simplicity of Windows and it's vendors that make it the leader in operating systems. Linux on the other hand, is time consuming only to
find that what you need in most if not all cases impossible. I can't wait for the replies.

Maybe dyn will weigh in further, I'm sure he has at least some experience with Linux whereas I have none. I must admit, I wasn't expecting this hardware support problem you're talking about to turn out to be true, but you've done your due diligence and if it's true it's true.

Linux supports pretty much all mainstream hardware and you can also try it live, without installing, to make sure your particular setup is supported. You don't even need to research it when you can try it live. The entire process takes probably less than half an hour - download, write to USB or CD/DVD, reboot, select USB or CD/DVD boot and that's it. After that you can simply reboot and be done with it, or eventually install it or just use it occasionally.

Linux supports pretty much all mainstream hardware and you can also try it live, without installing, to make sure your particular setup is supported. You don't even need to research it when you can try it live. The entire process takes probably less than half an hour - download, write to USB or CD/DVD, reboot, select USB or CD/DVD boot and that's it. After that you can simply reboot and be done with it, or eventually install it or just use it occasionally.

Fierfaks wrote:I don’t understand why switching to a new Windows when everything works well on the seven?

W7 is a bit outdated, newer Windows have native USB3 support and can mount disc images without any extra software, just 2 examples. W8 and W10 also optimized things further in many aspects. W8, for instance, uses less memory than W7 by default and has better memory management, and W8.1 outperforms them both. W10 adds memory compression, which is great, similar to zram in Linux - also used on the server this forums runs on. There really is no reason to cling to W7, if W10 is not an option i would use optimized and spy-free W8.1. The only question would be if W8.1 is better on older hardware than W10 LTSB/LTSC.

Thank. Take advantage of your advice.

P.S.
About W8, I forgot.

Hello! I've been forced to upgrade to Win10 when I replaced my box (mobo going bad - leaky caps) from Win 7. Fallout, thanks for the Win10 streamlining link.

FYI, if you liked having your desktop change at less than 1 minute (Win 7 let you go down to 10 sec), here's how you can fix that.

1 - Set you background slide show, timer 1 minute.

2 - Shift to themes, save theme with distinct name. Save multiple themes (slideshows) as desired.

3 - in ThisPC, navagate to Main (C:) > Users > (name) > AppData > Local > Microsoft > Windows > Themes
This folder holds the Name.themes files.

4 - Use Notepad to open Themename.theme file. At the end of the file, you'll see:

Interval=60000
Shuffle=1

The 60000 is for 60 1/1000 seconds, or one minute. Change to 10000 (10 seconds). I don't know if lesser numbers will work. Shuffle=0 means it won't change images, so set to 1.

5 - Save file (overwrite) as same name. Lather, rinse, repeat for other themes. Note that the Background, Slideshow page will read 10 minutes. Ignore this - don't change it.

6 - Log out and back in. Themes you've modified will now shuffle images in 10 seconds. 30000 for 30 seconds, etc.

Enjoy!

One example of new Linux running on old hardware...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_cbNfIZSCo

Ubuntu using Wayland - https://www.ubuntu.com/#download

This may seem simplistic, but I don't think anyone mentioned it. Every time I had a overheating problem on a laptop, which is at least once on every one I've had, the fan was dirty. Some dust stuck to the fan blades cuts the airflow way more than you'd think. Shoot, I had the same problem with my home A/C and the evaporator started freezing solid.

I guess I'm late to the party...
VG