The fan pulls air from the slots in the case bottom and pushes it through the heat sink, then out the vents in the side. That was a year's worth of fuzzy buildup. I found a disassembly guide here for Toshiba, but they're all similar.
Posted on 10/23/2014 7:40:39 AM PDT by Sherman Logan
I have a Dell notebook that's about 5 years old. Windows 7.
It works fine most of the time, but every few hours it goes into a mode where the CPU goes straight to 100% usage and stays there, making it unusable.
Sometimes it self corrects after 15 minutes or an hour, or sometimes I have to do a hard reboot.
Then it works fine again for a while.
Any suggestions?
I occasionally come across websites that are insanely CPU-intensive.
Such websites contain scripts that try to communicate with ad servers, various fancy “modern” content servers, etc. (”etc”??) in a fashion that is rather idiotic in terms of sucking CPU cycles. I hate them because they may well be sending or receiving data, and I don’t know that they’re doing. This is why the “web” architecture stinks. The user is powerless, in the dark and used and abused. This use of CPU-intensive designs makes people spend money on new hardware and faster internet access. It’s nonsensical considering that today’s home PC is more powerful than corporate servers that ran companies with thousands of employees only 20 years ago. A programmer today has to be a real idiot to use that much processing power - either that or they’re doing it on purpose, which is typically the case.
I would think that this “nasty website” problem is your problem. If not this, then I would think you have a malware problem. (my two guesses, not knowing anything more specific).
For offending websites, I simply kill the browser and I do not visit the offending website after that.
Also, I set my browser to not accept cookies; I make exceptions on a case-by-case basis, and I only allow cookies “for the session”, and I set the browser to delete cookies on exit. Only a precious few websites to I allow cookies to last between sessions, those are sites that I trust that I WANT to allow them to remember their own settings.
Note that if by default your browser does not accept cookies, some websites will be very slow, and occassionally I find one that pushes HTML to your browser - but the page does not render at all ! I can right click on the empty page and click on View Source - and see the HTML, but the browser renders only white space. Then, when I add that site to my list of exceptions and allow it to save Session cookies - the site displays. If I trust the site and want to see it in the future, I leave the Session cookie exception in place.
Also, I downloaded the BetterPrivacy Firefox plugin and I have it set to rigorously delete so-called Flash cookies. I’ll give you the settings I use for that if you want.
If the culprit is hogging the CPU and beating the hard drive it might take forever just to get the task manager started.
This might have something to do with it trying to connect to wi-fi. Try this — I have to do this about half the times I boot it up or come out of Sleep:
- CTL-ALT-DELETE to bring up the Windows Task Manager window
- Click “Show processes from all users”
- Click on the “CPU” to sort them by what’s using the most CPU. You might have to do this twice to sort it highest to lowest.
- Sometimes, especially after booting up, there’s a bogus “svchost.exe” task running. There are actually always three or four. If you see this as the first one taking up 50% or more of the CPU, left-click on it. Now you’ve selected it.
- Now right-click to get a menu. Look for “End Process” and click on it, and yes you’re sure. You should see that 100% go down, and “System Idle Process” will now be the biggest CPU user.
Excess browser memory consumption.
Kill your browser windows and restart them. It beats having to do a reboot.
Check the Task Manager under the Processes tab and see if you have a boatload of ‘DllHose.exe’ running. If so, your computer is trying to create thumbnails of every single image in a video file. I kid you not. This is a nasty bug Microsoft has NOT addressed.
Dell laptops are notorious for overheating. Over time you get dust buildup on vents and fans, this causes the CPU to get very hot. To avoid burning out the Mhz speed the CPU is running at is lowered dynamically. The fan typically increases speed too. Is your fan always running fast?
This can be why, when you leave it alone, it returns to normal - you’re allowing processes to become idle, the CPU has less demands on it and it cools down - only to heat back up once you start using it.
I’d try to clean it, something you can do yourself or have Best Buy do it.
It is time.
http://www.linuxmint.com/
There is a difference?
The productivity lost due to antivirus scanners on a global basis is simply staggering.
Maybe not. Perhaps the user likes using an operating system that has to be reloaded every year? Perhaps he feels a need to dedicate an hour or so of his computer's processing time to virus/malware scanners. Maybe he likes using an OS that you can't really restore to your previous settings without spending time re-customizing your desktop. Perhaps he thinks it is a good idea to let a program run just because the filename ends in 'exe', 'com', or 'bat'.
You never know, his time could be worth nothing, so the constant battle against malware doesn't really cost him anything.
Ebola?
Are you logged in?
I just went through this with a Dell Inspirion 6000, I ran Driver Booster to go through and update all the drivers, Free Ram Xp Pro (yeah still got XP) and Tweaking.com Windows Repair (warning can take a very long time) got the all at MajorGeeks). So far it seems to have helped a great deal, I found a file from Comodo antivirus that ate up system resources along with all the old carp on the system. Caveat Emptor, while I took the risk to my system you must investigate and decide for yourself, especially since all programs are freeware.
Find your largest files and see if there’s duplicates. Saw this for the first time months ago where a neighbor’s laptop was doing backups to her hard drive. She didn’t set it up for that.
That’s what I always did when I had Windows based machines. It’s really quite easy to do a full restore once you get the process down and after the first one (for myself at least) there was a noticeable improvement in performance. Probably from the removal of all the preloaded software junk that comes on all Windows computers you buy at places like Best Buy.
Once you get the operating system loaded the way it was intended, it works a lot better. I got another 3 years out of my Windows machine this way.
It just takes a lot of time and of course you need any software you want backed up as well as the files/documents. It takes like a Sunday afternoon of loading all the stuff you had before back on, and then reupdating everything.
It’s easier for me though to just use Macs, they are more expensive but they don’t need to be “refreshed” like that every 6-12 months. They just work. And now most software (except for some niche software) is written for Macs too. So that last hurdle between Windows and Macs is gone. I’ve never had to sacrifice acquiring some program because it’s not written for a Mac since like 2004.
(Oops now I’ve gone and done it; started a Mac/PC flame war!)
Very simple fix in Windows 7. Go to the follow directory and delete everything below it and restart your computer. It will solve your problem. Note that everything probably wont delete, don’t worry about that.
C:\Users\”yourprofilename”\AppData\Local\Temp\
“yourprofilename” is the name you gave your computer account (should not have double quotes in it. Note also that ...\AppData is hidden, so you’ll need to type it in as you path to it.
You can also delete everything in the following directory too, but only do this if you still have the problem.
C:\Users\farrp\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\
Probably paging your memory. Or indexing your drive. Tell me what process is using all that CPU.
I cannot agree with you more. I’ve had both and they are nothing but Time Vampires. Wait, wait wait, delay delay delay, and they spend FOREVER updating their useless selves. IMO the MS Essentials supplied software works better and I’ve been using it for 5 years now with no problems..
These people are just stealing your money on the pretense that they stop viral attacks. They don’t tell you they stop it by STOPPING you from frigging doing anything on your computer.
Or simply go to the “Run” box (or the “Search programs and files” box) and type in “%temp%” (without the quotes) ;’)
The fan pulls air from the slots in the case bottom and pushes it through the heat sink, then out the vents in the side. That was a year's worth of fuzzy buildup. I found a disassembly guide here for Toshiba, but they're all similar.
100% CPU usage means you are posting here all the time.
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