Vaio Laptop overheating?

[patkim]

I have VPCYB15AG Netbook, over 4 years old. This summer for the first time I have noticed higher than usual heating along the left side air vents and beneath. Is there anything that can be done about it? System monitoring apps show around 70 C (158 F)  CPU temperature.

 

Could this be happening as the laptop is now old?  Is it easy to open the back panel (I have those screwdrivers)   and clean the CPU heat sink, apply thermal paste etc for Y series laptop?

 

Thanks.

[sfbp]

Sorry but this problem is not Vaio although many Vaios and other laptop models have it from time to time.

Almost certainly some software component is running 100% cpu (or at least all of one core in a multiple core processor  eg 25% in a 4-core).

The only sensible way to find this is with process explorer (a free download from Microsoft at www.sysinternals.com). Once you've isolated the process and if possible killed it then you can try to figure out how to fix the problem. I would be checking things like printer drivers (HP in particular)  and Skype.

In essence what usually causes this is poor or misconfigured software attempting to poll a non working or non existent device. Its just possible malware is involved but not very likely.

Good luck!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[kalkie]

Hello,

I had this problem with my Acer laptop, often my laptop was automatic shut down because the temperature was almost 100 degrees C, the cause appeared to be too much dust in the inside. I used a vacuum cleaner on all the ventilation openings to remove the dust as much as possible. This worked very well fo me, the problem did not return.

I use Speedfan to control the fan speed and this program shows also the CPU usage and shows the temperatures of the cores and hdd's and so on.

You can download this free program from www.almico.com/speedfan.php

I hope this helps.

Jan

 

[sfbp]

Jan, I'm impressed. Somewhat sceptical, but impressed nonetheless.

I want OP to be sure he doesn't wreck the machine by the process of opening it up when it actually might still be software. Many devices get ruined because the person opening them has not got the correct directions.

So i would recommend chasing down exactly when this happens. Eg if you get heating when windows has not even booted yet, then the hardware issue may be important. Another thing that may be wrong is that the CPU fan has failed and there is no cooling. Can you hear the fan and can you feel any warm air being expelled? On my IBM laptop I was able to buy a replacement fan unit. On desktop machines, I always end up taking the fan apart and putting one drop of bicycle oil in the bearing. YMMV.

But I would start by running as little software as possible and seeing if it heats up. You might pause the boot sequence for example.

If you find it ONLY heats up when you boot all the way into Windows, then you need to consider the software issues. BEFORE disassembling the machine.

So both Jan and I may be right, or one only, or neither..... sorry to say.

[kalkie]

I didn't open my laptop, I know the danger of doing that, I used the vacuum cleaner through the ventilation-openings at the bottomside of the laptop, from the outside, and set the vacuum cleaner as strong as possible, so no danger at all.