Laptop Overheating How to fix IT

One of the most common issues with aging laptops is overheating, something many people aren’t sure how to fix. We’ll help you figure out what’s causing the heat and how to keep your notebook functioning at a lower temperature.

Overheating computers can cause a lot of problems, from seemingly random blue screens to data loss. You might not even know that it’s the root of your issues, and before you know it you have a burnt-out motherboard on your hands. Let’s go step by and step and see how to deal with overheating computers. We’ll be dealing primarily with laptops, but most of the same principles apply to desktops as well.

Air Flow and Heat Transfer

The first thing you need to do is figure out where the heat is coming from. No air flow means no heat transfer, so figure out where the air vents are. Are they blowing hot air, or is there barely a breeze, even when the fan is overtaxed?

Most commonly, an accumulation of dust in the vents and fans through the cooling channels will be culprit in restricting air flow. Cleaning it out will work best. Turn you laptop upside-down and look at what you’ve got.

Unscrew the fan doors and you should be able to lift out the fan and clean everything with a can of compressed air.

If you find that a fan is spinning erratically, you may want to try lifting the sticker off of the axle and putting a drop of mineral oil to keep it going.

You can also try to look up the part number from your laptop’s user manual or by searching your laptop model number online. Once you have that, you can find replacements pretty easily on eBay and the like.

Dying Batteries
There are plenty of different types of batteries, and many different schools of thought on battery maintenance and life span, but one thing that seems pretty unanimous is that batteries aren’t meant to be stored at 100% or 0% capacity. I know plenty of people who buy laptops and always keep the charger in, never actually using the battery. You can definitely expect to kill your battery’s health this way, since you’re essentially storing the battery when it’s full. Bad batteries don’t just give out really quickly, they can generate heat.
You can buy replacement batteries pretty easily online, even for laptops that are four years old. You just need to know what model your computer/battery is. If you can’t find one, you may consider using your laptop as a desktop and remove the overheating battery completely from the equation.

Persistent Overheating
If you’ve taken the air vents and battery out of the picture and you’re still having problems, then you might have a more persistent heat issue. Sometimes a dusty hard drive can cause heat problems and data loss. Some laptops just “run hot,” even without a major load on the CPU. Try cleaning out these areas as best you can before you move on to another solution.
Dust under the processor and RAM doors to get rid of any dust and debris. If you’ve got a net book or a laptop without compartments underneath, things might be more difficult. You should be able to find instructions for getting the back off so you can clean things properly.

Lighten the Load

If your computer’s heat is related to how much data the CPU chugs through, you might want to manage your processes better. You can use the Windows Task Manager to see what’s most intensive, then use Auto runs to see all your start up processes and trim them down You can also change the order of the start up processes that are necessary. The staggered loading of software will help balance your processor’s load.

You can install and run Process Explorer to see the files that each process has open and its associated CPU usage over time. This can help you decide what to get rid of and what to spare. We’re also big fans of CCleaner, which allows you to clean history and cache files as well as manage your start up applications quickly and easily. You can free up some much needed space that way and get a little more efficiency out of your OS.

If you want to keep an eye on the temperature of your laptop, I recommend Core Temp for Windows. It’s an extremely light-weight app that won’t pressure your CPU, but lets you keep an eye on your internal temperature.

You can tell it to display the temperature when it’s in the system tray. One of the best features is under the Options menu: Overheat Protection.

Here, you can define a temperature that will trigger your computer to Sleep, Hibernate, or Shutdown. Core Temp also works as a Windows Gadget, though if you’re overheating from CPU-intensive processes, I’d turn Desktop Gadgets off. Another thing you can do is turn that fancy Aero interface off, and you can create a shortcut to quickly toggle it if you can’t live completely without it.
If you’re using Linux instead, you might want to consider a more spartan distro. I’ve personally had a lot of success with Crunch bang; a clean install leaves me with Open box as a window manager, a nice dock, and some nice desktop effects, along with only 80MB of RAM usage. It’s based on Debian, so there’s a good amount of compatibility with software. If you run Arch, you might want to try ArchBang instead, which is the same thing but built on Arch instead of Debian.