Solved Forever At Last: Overheating Laptops

If you follow this blog, you may remember I've been dealing with my computer suddenly shutting down on me, and I've had a hell of a time figuring out the cause. It turns out the problem was very simple. It was not a driver problem, it was a simple matter of the computer overheating. Certain drivers and kernels were able to mitigate the issue, but I've finally solved it once and for all. This is how I did it.

I live with a guy that is an engineer. He was on the forefront of solving these kinds of problems in the '80's, and also designed a lot of heat sinks for Dell. Since I had searched the internet high and low for a solution to my computer's problem, I have to admit I did not have much faith that he would be able to help me fix it, but I was totally wrong. I took my computer apart, and he took one look at the fan and said "That thing is filthy. Get some rubbing alcohol and qtips, and clean it out." So I grabbed some 91% isopropol, some qtips, and a vacuum cleaner. I started removing the dust from the fan blades and soon realized that there was so much dust and crap stuck in the fan that it was about an inch deeper than I thought, and after it was cleaned I could stick a qtip in between the blades and hit the bottom, where before I thought that the dust was part of the fan blades. I swabbed out dust, stuck a vacuum cleaner right on top of the fan and sucked out tons of crap, and repeated until it was all gone. Then I turned on the computer, wrote a temperature monitor script, and ran as many programs as I could as once. The processor has not gotten above 50 degrees Celsius since. Prior to that, the CPU was running at about 75 even when it was idling, and the computer would overheat after any of the 6 sensors went above 91. Problem solved. So next time your laptop overheats, just look at the fan from the inside and do what I just said. You will extend the lifetime of your computer by years.

anon@linuxpc:~$ sensors
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +16.0°C  (crit = +108.0°C)
temp2:        +37.0°C  (crit = +105.0°C)
temp3:        +46.0°C  (crit = +108.0°C)
temp4:        +45.0°C  (crit = +105.0°C)
temp5:        +20.1°C  (crit = +108.0°C)
temp6:        +30.0°C  (crit = +110.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:       +47.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 1:       +45.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)