How To Fix An Overheating Laptop

The greatest threat for your laptop, except for your your coffee mug, is overheating. It can cause hardware failure and permanent damage. In this article I will introduce ways that you can prevent or fix an overheating laptop and thus improve the performance and the extend the lifespan of your laptop.

How Do You Know Your Laptop Is Overheating?

A sure sign that your notebook gets too hot is when your fan always runs at maximum speed. You may also experience reduced performance because the CPU cuts back its clock speed to escape heat pressure. Moreover, the fail safe software may trigger a sudden shutdown to prevent hardware damage.

What Causes Overheating?

In two words: insufficient cooling.

The reasons include dust blocking intake grills or exhaust ports, a clocked up fan, or a degenerated thermal grease (aka thermal compound) between the heat sink and the CPU.

How Can You Prevent or Fix an Overheating Laptop?

There are several hardware fixes that can cure overheating.

1. Fix Internal Cooling

The first and most important thing you need to do when your laptop is overheating, is to clean the fan/s that provide/s cooling to the CPU and graphics card. Over time they build up layers of dust and dirt that slow them down and block flow of air. Consult your laptop’s manual or manufacturer to find out how you can open the laptop to access and clean these parts.

Before you attempt to do any cleaning, however, follow these steps:

• shut down the computer.
• remove the battery.
• unplug the power strip.
• ground yourself

Carefully clean the fan/s with a cotton swab dipped in a drop of alcohol. Make sure the alcohol has completely evaporated before you reconnect the laptop to the power. You can also use a vacuum cleaner to remove the dust and dirt that clocks up the fan/s. To prevent damage to the fan, do not let it revolve in the wrong direction. If you want to use canned air to clean the fan, arrest the fan by holding it down.

Next, you can clean the exhaust port by sucking out air with a vacuum cleaner. The exhaust port usually sits on the side of the laptop. It’s the opening that blows out hot air.

The intake grills are small openings that allow air to be sucked into the laptop by the revolving fans. They can sit on the sides or at the bot

tom of your notebook. To clear the intake grills, spray them with canned air.

Finally, you can apply fresh thermal grease to the interface between the CPU and its heat sink. Again, please consult the laptop’s manual or ma

nufacturer to obtain instructions on how to disassemble these components.

2. Keep The Laptop On A Hard & Flat Surface

Most laptops suck in cooling air through their bottoms. If the laptop sits on an uneven surface like a blanket, pillow, or your lap, the flow of air into the laptop is disturbed. Subsequently, the cooling is not optimal, heat builds up, the surface becomes hot, the temperature of sucked in cooling air increases, and eventually the laptop overheats.

This scenario is easily avoided by keeping the laptop on a hard and flat surface. You can use something as simple as a tray or get a special laptop holder or lap stand.

3. Invest In A Laptop Cooler

Laptop coolers are meant to provide additional c

ooling. However, getting the wrong cooler can actually make the problem worse. Before you purchase a cooler, you need to understand the flow of air into and out of your laptop.

As mentioned above, most laptops suck in air for cooling from the bottom. This makes sense because warm air rises upwards. However, a cooler that sits underneath the laptop and sucks air away from it, does not contribute to laptop cooling and rather causes a more rapid overheating.

If your laptop has intake grills at its bottom, purchase a cooler that blows cool air upwards, i.e. into the laptop. You can also get a passive cooler that does not consume power and merely absorbs heat.

What Are Potential Software Fixes?

If none of the hardware fixes result in lasting improvements, you can also revert to software fixes that address the performance and power usage of your laptop. However, addressing excessive heat with a software fix means you give up performance in favor of preserving the hardware.

You can either reduce the brightness of your screen or reduce the CPU clock speed. In Windows, underclocking or undervolting is done in the BIOS, but can also be controlled through software tools. Consult the Undervolting Guide on the Notebook Review forum for more information about this procedure.

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5 Ways To Save Laptop Battery Use

How to save laptop battery? That was the problem and that's what I will discuss this time. There are 5 tips on how to care for laptop batteries which I will describe below. Conserve the use of laptop batteries is a demand for those who appreciate efficiency.

1. Manage Power Consumption. One thing you can do is to access and set the power management options in Windows. For Windows XP users, simply click on Start and select Control Panel. Click Performance and Maintenance and then Power Options. You will find many power management schemes here, please choose the one that works best for you.

2. Hibernate or Standby Mode. If possible, try to adjust your laptop to a position Hibernation Standby Mode instead. Hibernation is a facility whereby when you put off work and resting the computer then when your computer re-use of this facility will restore your original keposisi. Standby mode Mode is faster but restart consume more power.

3. Make just one job at the same time. Believe it or not, if you open several programs at the same time will make the CPU more busy and will take up more battery power source. Try to use just one program on one occasion. Close one of the program before you move to the next program.

4. Turn off the Wireless Networking. Another problem which often consume electricity in your laptop and you do not realize is that your WiFi connection. Try to disable this if you are not using your wireless connection. I also mention this tip here, because this is one of the best ways to save for a laptop. Why? When you run a wifi it will always happen the communication between your laptop with wifi and it is very resource consuming laptop. That is also why it is highly recommended to turn off your HP at a location where there is no signal because it will make HP so hot and can damage the HP.

5. Lower Display Brightness. Indeed, if the screen is very bright as possible from one side is good because the picture is very clear, but remember that the more light will get to spend a laptop screen battery resources. So should lower the display brightness of your laptop and your laptop battery will last.

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Difference of Laptop, NoteBook & NetBook

Many computer users are still confused to distinguish between the Laptop, Notebook with Netbook. Here we will discuss the differences between the two computer devices.

The difference between laptops and notebooks at this time mainly on the manufacturers who chose to call its product. Technically and traditionally, the difference between the two is the problem size.

Notebook Computers

An extremely lightweight personal computer. Notebook computers typically weigh less than a few pounds and small enough to be placed easily in a briefcase. Notebook computers use a variety of techniques, known as flat-panel technology, to produce a light display and is not great.

In terms of computing power, the modern notebook computer is almost equivalent to a personal computer. They have the same CPU, memory capacity and disk drives. However, all this packed in a small package and the expensive.

Notebook computers are equipped with a battery pack that allows you to run it without having to connect to the electrical panel to get power, but the battery needs to be recharged every few hours.

In addition, some facilities on the notebook computer is reduced to streamline the layout, among others, such as: Com Port, Printer Port, Connector PCMCI, PS2 Keyboard and PS2 Mouse. The equipment is almost not found in the Notebook

Laptops

A portable computer is very small - small enough so that it can be placed in your lap. Currently, a laptop computer that is more frequently called notebook computers, though technically laptops are somewhat larger in size than notebooks, both in thickness and weight.

This laptop originally designed similar to the desktop, but with a fairly small size and light weight that can be used on your lap. You will find that the laptop has a feature that more than a notebook, this is because the notebook style portable computer is for mobility, not just portability. To become a mobile device, notebook is a design that is thinner and weighs less than a laptop, simply because they do not come packed with features and some devices and drives.

Because the same design as the Desktop, the device contained in the Desktop found on laptops, even many additional devices that are not owned but possessed Laptop Desktop, among others, such as: PCMCI connector, Wireless, Card Reader, Infra reed, and Bluthoot

Netbook

Netbook is a computer device that is similar to the Laptop and Notebook, but much smaller than the devices above.

Netbook in specialized production for communications equipment, and could hardly be used for general computer usage such as playing games, Graphic Design, etc..

Because it is designed for communication (Special for Online Internet) then some of the features found on notebook and laptop does not exist on a Netbook. Like, on a Netbook not found : Output VGA, DVD Room, limited hard drive capacity (Even some hard Netbook using Chip), a limited number of USB (mostly only 2 USB ports), PS2 Mouse, PS2 Keyboard, Card reader etc.

In addition, the software can be installed also limited, usually only the OS software (Windows or Linux), MS Office, Internet Browse, and music and video player.

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