Laptop overheating

[Stimo]

Hello,

I'm using Recuva on a FujitsuSiemens Amilo A1645 to recover photos after having formated its hard drive.

Recuva progresses to 7 % then the laptop suddenly turns off, showing no info.

I wonder if this crash could be due to overheating ?

 

Is there a way to check this ?

How can I force Recuva to work slower ?

 

Maybe on next Recuva version, a "pause" button could be added in order to let the PC cool itself ?

[Alan_B]

1.

Look at http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=8600

It is POSSIBLE that when you reach 7% something special happens, and just possibly the Recuva diagnostics MIGHT give a valuable clue.

 

2.

Google for

Fujitsu Siemens Amilo "user forum"

You may get technical advice upon overheating from their user forums, or even Fujitsu Technical Support.

 

3.

Search for "Temperature"

Searching on this Piriform site gave me 25 hits before I posted this reply.

You will find reference to Speedfan which will show you various temperatures.

There may be other freeware programs also recommended.

 

Then if you have the energy, search for "Temperature" on Google ! !

 

Regards

Alan

[Stimo]

Thank you for your answer, and many thanks to CCleaner & Recuva !

 

In fact, I succeeded in solving this problem.

I used a very good program that allows to control CPU speed on XP notebooks : http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/

 

I used "battery optimized" setting that keeps the CPU speed at its lowest, 15% of max speed.

The scan lasted for several hours, but the laptop didn't crashed, Recuva worked just fine and I recovered what I was looking for.

[Alan_B]

The good news that Recuva was able to restore your file is overshadowed by the terrible news it needed the processor to run at 15% of nominal speed.

 

This rules out any possibility that the original shut down was due to a fatal exception error when Recuva stumbled over an unexpected complication.

 

This leaves open the probability that something is wrong with your computer system, and every time you do anything more demanding than reading emails you could have further catastrophic shut downs which may progressively corrupt more and more of your files.

 

Have a look in your Event Viewer, especially System Events. Things like "ftdisk error - data may have been lost" give me great anxiety.

 

Since you had a need for Recuva, you obviously lack an adequate backup regime.

 

Far more urgently, and also not involving the need to buy external drives and backup software, you really ought to check (and improve) the health of your System. Perhaps next week it will only sustain 5% of nominal speed.

I think you need urgent expert advice. I am not an expert in such matters. My special skill is recognising the need for an expert ! !

 

Regards

Alan

[DennisD]

Just as a footnote to Alans advice, I've came across a lot of googled examples of your overheating problem, sometimes resulting in cracked casings, and none of them to do with software. Some of the posts were to do with your model, and some with others.

 

I would second Alans suggestion to get the overheating thing checked out. It could save you a lot of strife in case your computer goes down as a result, and you lose your stuff.

 

Hopefully, you backup your important files.

[Stimo]

First, thank you for you interest in this case.

 

I think the laptop is sane.

For sure it is quite noisy. Maybe the cooler is tired and doesn't work properly.

 

When I faced the problem, I first took a look to the Events Viewer. Absolutely nothing was recorded.

PC stopped without warning and had no time to write an error report.

Afterwards, I thought that the laptop reached it's critical temperature and shut down to avoid damage.

 

After the 3rd or 4th crash, I performed a deep scandisk, it didn't found anything wrong.

 

I then looked at the Task Manager / Performance during Recuva's work. CPU Usage was at average 99-100%.

That is what made me think about overheating.

 

With SpeedswitchXP at 15% max speed, I figured the laptop wouldn't reach the critical temperature.

I tested this idea and it worked.

 

Maybe Recuva has a side effect that stresses weak processors ?

 

I'll wait for a week to see if the laptop is fine.

Next, I will run a benchmark and see what it says.

[DennisD]

As long as your happy, but overheating seems to be part and parcel of a lot of notebooks/laptops, and there are many programs that can max out a CPU whilst scanning.

 

I use a number of Video converting applications, and these always max out my CPU and set the cooling fans in motion, but being a tower unit the fans cope quite easily with controlling the CPU and casing temperature.

 

If I had a notebook/laptop which was prone to overheating, I would never leave it unattended whilst using software that caused the temperature to climb. You probably already realise that, but I sincerely hope you're never tempted.

 

Just as an aside, you can buy products specifically designed to keep laptops/notebooks from overheating.

 

There's some good examples on this website, and not too expensive. Might be worth a consideration if the overheating persists.

 

http://www.nextag.com/cooling-fans-for-lap...ter/search-html

 

Either way, take care with your laptop.

[Capman]

One of my laptops was suffering from shutting down due to overheating problems recently, so I took the casing off underneath cleaned the fan the best I could, put it all back together and the problem continued.

Soon after I bought a new laptop so I thought I would take the old one apart again as I could spend more time on it, this time though I removed the fan which was held in place by extremely small screws, lo and behold there was a large amount of dust that I had not spotted before, cleaning it thoroughly has now meant that the laptop is as good as new.

Before the cleaning it could not even be left idle on a flat surface, it had to be stood on end, now it can be left on a carpet, the bed, literally anything and it never cuts out.

[YoKenny]

I like SpeedFan:

What is SpeedFan

SpeedFan allows you to have a deeper view of the status of your computer. Almost every computer includes support for hardware monitoring. Accessing digital temperature sensors is really useful. If you are trying to figure out why your pc hangs when under heavy load or after some hours of usage, SpeedFan might help you to find the real cause. Very often it is a poor power supply, or an improperly installed heatsink that lead to behaviours that we tend to associate with errors from the operating system, but that are not. SpeedFan automatically searches your computer for interesting chips: the hardware monitor chips. SpeedFan can expose voltages, fan speeds and temperatures. On rare occasions, the BIOS doesn't activate such features. SpeedFan tries to enable them as long as this is a safe thing to do. Not only the motherboard is searched, but also some video cards and almost every recent hard disk. SpeedFan can access status info from EIDE, SATA and even SCSI drives, showing, in a consistent way, internal data that can be used to diagnose current and future hard disk failures. This is known as S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology). At the lowest level, SpeedFan is a hardware monitor software that can access digital temperature sensors, but its main feature is that it can control fan speeds according to the temperatures inside your pc, thus reducing noise.

http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php