8 replies to this topic

[Archur]

I' ve just recently acquired a Sony Vaio VPCEA37FL, less than a month ago. In the last couple days, the fan sounds a lot, seem to be too accelerated, and the left side of the laptop gets hot. The sound is annoying. At the begining, the laptop was so quiet and not get hot at all. I looked for information in the web, but every note points to a dirty fan (which I think this is not the case). Does any one have any clue on what may be happening? Thank you.

[sfbp]

Running W7 presumably.

Take a look at Task Manager and see if the software is running the CPU at 100% all the time. This is definitely something that would cause it to get hot.

There are several possible solutions (and this applies to almost any laptop)

1. Change the power management settings so the system doesn't run at full power or only at full power for certain applications.
2. Check and see if one particular application is always taking huge amounts of CPU (you will have to figure out how to pull up task manager (starts with ctrl-alt-delete). Kill that app and see if CPU usage goes down.
3. Disable the wireless (WiFi and Bluetooth), see if things suddenly start cooling down. If they do, you may be able to operate by configuring the wireless to use less than 100% power (deep down in the configuration menus for the wireless adapter).
4. Figure out if some application software you recently installed triggered all this somehow.

I have seen all these problems on an IBM Laptop running XP. W7 tends to use a lot more power.

Good luck. Tell us more symptoms and I'll try to help. I don't think this is a Sony issue.

[Stuge]

are you sure that laptops processor isn't working for long periods of time @ 100% ?

in between Welcome to Sonyinsider

[Archur]

Excellent clue. I did stop any communication to Internet (through Norton Internet Security) but the noise continued. Then I went to the Task Manager as you suggested, but honestly I was affraid of stopping any application that may affect the system. I looked for any "weird" name, but none of them was suspicious. In other hand I do not know if the memory usage equals to CPU usage... (I need to study about it). I stopped all open applications (just Google Chrome, System Gadget CPU and Windows Live Messenger), and the noise continued. Then I noticed the Vaio Gate was opened, but when I tried to reach it, it got frozen. Then I closed it through the Task Manager, and the noise stopped!

The laptop has Windows 7. Software installed (not from factory) Norton 360 2011, Office Starter y Kodak AiO.

As you may infer, I'm not an expert user (but not a beginner either), so I thank you a lot for your help.

[Archur]

Hi Stuge... Thanks for the welcomme message. I checked the CPU usage through the system gadget, and it always kept around 35%. The graph in the Task Manager looked a little bit higher than it. I do not know how to split the CPU usage into applications, but I'll try to find out how to do it. As mentioned in the previous reply, stopping Vaio Gate seemed to fix the problem. I'll leave it disable. I'll keep monitoring the CPU performance (now is very quiet) and keep you posted if the problem persist.

Thank you!

[sfbp]

I noticed the Vaio Gate was opened, but when I tried to reach it, it got frozen. Then I closed it through the Task Manager, and the noise stopped!

What on earth is Vaio Gate (I'm too lazy to go see!)?????

... later (I was in a hurry, sorry about that)

I would make educated guess that you pointed Gate at some pictures on a memory stick or external drive or network drive that is no longer there.

Ever wondered why the system is called Windows, not Gates? (not-so-subtle insider joke).

[Christopher]

Something I commonly do on troubled systems is go to Start, then type in msconfig in the search bar. Click on the "Startup" tab and uncheck anything that is unnecessary to load at startup. If you're not comfortable with this, you can take a screenshot of the items in that list and I can tell you what to disable. This will at least lower the number of processes at startup.

[Stuge]

@ Archur:
were you able to fix the issue ?

[Archur]

Hi Stuge,

No, I haven't. What I've noticed is that if I press the power button to temporary close the laptop and then I open again, the fan makes the noise and do not stop. I was thinking about Norton making a background process, but even I stopped it, the noise continues. What I think is that due to a certain process any application stops but not at all and keeps the fan working (bug)... Also, I thought about a hacker, but in despite I stop the internet connection, the noise continues... I'd like to know a little bit of engineering to understand what is happening...

Thank you for asking.