Laptop cooling pad provides too much air?!

[Xist]

For a while now, my laptop has been grinding to a halt, but after one to three minutes, everything is fine. It always seemed like it was after I shifted my legs.

This is, after all, a laptop. It sits in my lap!

It just does not like my lap. I need to get a wifi-enabled dog, apparently.

I took my laptop to the nearest computer repair store and the manager insisted my external fan was giving my laptop too much air and then said that I looked at him like an idiot. He kept trying to talk about the fan, while one or two friends told me it sounded like my hard drive was anticipating a fall and parking the read heads. I told him that if I tilted my computer, you heard a grinding sound, and everything slowed down for a while, but was fine again afterward. He kept talking about the fan, I asked if he would check out my hard drive for me, and he said "I will do anything you want me to, but I don't think you do, because you don't think that I know anything."

Too much air?! I really want to turn my yard blower on my computer for a while, just to show that it is fine.

Too much air, my laptop still gets hot.

[Baltothewolf]

Your friend is an idiot, don't let him touch your laptop. More air is better, period. And your hard drive is probably dying. About it getting hot, provided you blow it out with air, all laptops get hot. If you don't blow it out with air, go do that.

[redpoint5]

Most noises coming from a laptop are due to the cooling fan(s).

I'd blow out the heatsink in that thing as I'm sure it's full of animal fur. If the air exiting the laptop is very warm or even hot, then that could mean the heatsink is gunked up. If the fan runs at near full speed and little to no air exits the cooling vent, that certainly means it's gunked up.

The heatsink is accessed on most laptops by removing the screws that hold the keyboard, and then removing the keyboard. A temporary solution to overheating is to blow the lint away from the heatsink with a can of compressed air.

[Xist]

I apologize, this was not any friend of mine, nor can I imagine him being anyone's friend, although I imagine he would say the same of me. This was allegedly the manager of the nearest computer repair place. I updated my original post to include that.

I live with roommates and they only shed garbage and noise. To the best of my knowledge, none of that is stuck inside my computer. I just used a can of compressed air to blow out my fan, I just saw a mist come back out. I am pretty sure I already did that.

My friends told me that my hard drive was probably moving the read heads, anticipating a crash.

I was in-town a week or two ago and then drove back up to my mom's. I forgot the charger for this laptop. I also brought two old laptops. I started using my dad's laptop, which worked great, once I removed the malware. However, when I drove down yesterday, I forgot his charger, as well as the one charger that I brought for the two old laptops--they are both Asus, with interchangeable chargers and batteries. I bought a universal charger previously, so now that I can use Dad's laptop, I will take mine to a computer store that has been around at least a decade.

[jamesqf]

1) Replace your hard drive with an SSD.

2) Get software that monitors things like internal temps and fan speed. I use conky (Conky - Home ), but that might Linux only. Then if you have noise &c, but your fan's not running, you'll know the fan's not the problem.

3) You could easily have a lot of crud inside the laptop that's interfering with cooling. Only way to tell is to open it up and look. Blowing things out with air helps, but it's not 100%

4) All laptops don't get hot, at least not all the time. A lot depends on what you're doing with them. For instance, mine is sitting at 118 F (2% CPU, fan off) as I'm just doing web browsing.

You might be able to cut CPU/power utilization, and thus heat, with something like PowerTop (https://01.org/powertop - again, probably Linux only). Most computers come with a lot of things enabled by default, that you may not need or want.

[bestclimb]

I use speccy on my windows puters and Psensor on linux for monitoring. I can't see where excess cooling would be a bad thing unless you are using your computer in arctic conditions.

On the hierarchy of cooling most computers use 1 heat sink/radiat, 2 fan on, then if that does not cool things down it will 3 reduce power to the processor.

I'd replace the HD asap (SSD if you can swing it), then get some monitoring software on the thing and watch temps as you do more intensive things with the computer while listening to the fan for peace of mind.

Again I can't see how too much cooling air to electronics is a bad thing (unless you get crazy with the cold)

[Baltothewolf]

Originally Posted by bestclimb

I use speccy on my windows puters and Psensor on linux for monitoring. I can't see where excess cooling would be a bad thing unless you are using your computer in arctic conditions.

On the hierarchy of cooling most computers use 1 heat sink/radiat, 2 fan on, then if that does not cool things down it will 3 reduce power to the processor.

I'd replace the HD asap (SSD if you can swing it), then get some monitoring software on the thing and watch temps as you do more intensive things with the computer while listening to the fan for peace of mind.

Again I can't see how too much cooling air to electronics is a bad thing (unless you get crazy with the cold)

Bestclimb, I know A couple people who cool with LNG for extreme overclocking lol :P. Anyway, OP I agree with bestclimb here, nothing really to add.

[Xist]

I bought an SSD last year for Black Friday and was amazed at the difference, for three weeks, and then it died. I replaced it under warranty, but did not install it until I needed to do something called SSD1 for the Army. I could not get SSD1 to work, but I could get my SSD to work, right?

Well, for three days. It did not seem any faster than my normal drive, either.

I have looked at SSDs on SlickDeals, but I want HP to replace my hard drive, since it is under warranty.

I dropped off my laptop on my way to my unit to work on SSD; my Sergeant told me Monday morning that if it is not completed by drill I will stay until 2200 to work on it, and if I do not finish by the end of drill, I will receive a negative counseling. I am trying to work on it now, but I spend far more time waiting for pages to load than anything else. We have a four-day drill, I need to report tomorrow at 0430.

The person with whom I spoke at the second store said that too much air doe not make any sense and then they called and said HP will not authorize them to work on it, I need to talk to HP, and get them to send me a box.

If you don't know the answer to a superior's question, you will never go wrong with the response "I don't know, Sir"

I don't know about that, Sir.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Xist

II am trying to work on it now, but I spend far more time waiting for pages to load than anything else.

But that is very unlikely to have anything to do with your laptop. It's the speed of your internet connection, and how fast the pages get served by the server they reside on. And if other sites load with reasonable speed, the problem is site-specific.

Just as an extreme example, earlier this year the Nevada Obamacare website was taking upwards of 1-3 minutes to load simple pages for me, on the same hardware & internet connection that was doing internet browsing &c at reasonable speed. So first thing is to ask others in your unit who access the same site if they have similarly slow download speeds.

[Cobb]

Have you googled your laptops make and model to see if you are alone in ths problem? I had a laptop from 1999 that did that behavior and it was the hard drive. Once day I went to boot up and instead of seeing windows 98se I saw the scan disk blue screen and it froze at 51%. That was it.

I got a surface 2 and it rocks. You just cant install any software on it. Otherwise go with the Pro series.