Laptop Overheating Problem

[aharon]

Shalom and greetings all my pals,

My three or four year old HP Pavilion DV6885E Special Edition laptop with T8100 Centrino Duo Core 2.10 GHZ with 3 GB ram, 250 GB, 256 mb NVIDIA GeForce 8400 M GS, 1248x800 resolution, and Vista Premium has developed overheating problem since 3 months ago. If any FSX flight goes at 2 hours or over, the laptop will shut down by itself due to overheat ruining my flights. And I cannot be limited to one hour or 90 minute flights!!!

My laptop never had overheating problem for past 3 years of FSX flying.

The funny thing is that when I do normal computing on my laptop such as word processing or spreadsheet work or web surfing or watching youtube or watching DVD movies for HOURS HOURS HOURS, my laptop NEVER gets overheated BUT when I fly for 2 hours or more using Microsoft Flight Simulator FSX Deluxe, my laptop gets so extremely hot and shuts down by itself. Last night, my laptop shut down ONE SECOND before I landed on MMUN runway 12 during flight from KMIA to MMUN in middle of Vatsim event!!!

Is there anything I can do? Yes my laptop is three years old going on for fourth year but it is in mint condition and is well cared and well maintained. No graphic problems with videos or FSX flying or DVD playing.

Will the cooling pads with fans offered by other companies work when placed under my laptop or is it gimmick garbage and it will never cool down whatever is very hot inside my laptop??? Right or wrong?

Or should I disassemble my laptop to clean inside and then reassemble it? My question is that am I allowed to open the back of my laptop and see if there is any dust to be cleared out? The warning label on the back of the laptop which says "Lamp containing mercury. Handle with care" is making me nervous.

Or should I take it to any service center to have them open the laptop and clear out the dust? I went to three local computer repair shops and they wanted one hundred bucks to remove the bottom and clean dust out which will takes few minutes. Best Buy offers 35 bucks for same service but insists that my laptop has to spend few nights at their store. NO THANKS.

Or is it extremely unlikely that there will be dust collecting inside laptop because of airtight and well built laptop???

Would it have something to do with heat sink that is dying? I heard something that heat sink cools down laptops????? Or am I wrong??

Where can I find easy instructions on how to open back of laptop and clean out dust? I had cleaned out dust from desktops by opening the desktop cases easily without problem but it will be MY FIRST time I want to open back of laptop.

How do I find function in my laptop that will tell me that the internal fan is working? I could not find in device manager and I need to find somewhere in my laptop that tells me that the internal fan is operating properly. The fan is so quiet in efficient manner in my laptop that I cannot tell if it is running or not past 3 years!!

Meanwhile I have disabled since 3 months ago power saving settings in my laptop so that I can be sure that the fan will continue running all the time but it apparently did not help.

Yes I can easily afford awesome powerful "hot rod" Alienware laptop for 4,000 bucks if I want but I do not want to waste money and I like my laptop very much which is performing well for me in everything especially FSX flying and Photoshop!!! Other reason for not wanting to buy laptop is that I built up so much add-ons on my FSX that you can imagine how difficult and how much trouble is to move everything in FSX from my current laptop to any new one.

Got any suggestions??

Thanks,

Aharon

[teson1]

I've got exactly the same problem with a HP DV7 1245ef laptop.
GPU Nvidia GF 9600M GT commonly reaches 95°C during FS9.
After 1-2 hrs or so I get the blurries, framerates drop, and then the computer shuts down.

I tried to clean the air outlets with compressed air a few days ago. Seems this had a huge effect ! GPU temperature on a long flight went up to 73°C only. Too little experience really, but this seemed to help a lot!
I have also bought a very cheap cooling pad with fans, but this didn't seem to have a significant effect.

HP has instructions in their support center regarding this issue and how to clean.
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport...ctID=c01007591
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport...ctID=c01657439

There are also service manuals to download which show how to open the computer and access the components.
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport...?lang=en&cc=us

However, it may be a good idea to have a computer shop do the cleaning nevertheless.
The fan gave off a nasty sound after the cleaning session, and I had feared to have bent a fan blade or bearing by the compressed air stream. The sound has disappeared now, so may be it just was some dust or particle lodged in there.
But there is some potential for damaging the computer by a DIY approach.

[fxsttcb]

One note: When using compressed air, do not aim the air stream directly at a fan.
It could easily overspeed the bearings and cause permanent damage...Don

[gizmosells]

Go get middle of road desktop for 500 bucks and would not bother using FSX or FS2004 even fs98 been there and done that with laptops. Its all about CPU and power load handling.

[aharon]

Thanks all for kind replies, especially Teson1 for great links and great explanations.

Aharon

[teson1]

One note: When using compressed air, do not aim the air stream directly at a fan.
It could easily overspeed the bearings and cause permanent damage...Don

Haha. That's what I told myself as well... In hindsight.

[aharon]

Problem solved.

Finally found a Best Buy location that agreed to my demands: immediate (no waiting) cleaning of inside of my laptop including blowing out dust and lint and must be done under my watchful eyes and my supervision.

Wow lots of dust blowing out of inside of laptop!!!!

Price was only 29 bucks for 15 minutes of disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling done by Best Buy's Geek Squad staff members dressed in very nerd outfits.

Now I am going to test FSX for one hour flight, then 90 minute flight, then 2 hour flight, and finally 2 and 1/2 hour flight to see if there will be no overheating problem.

Thanks all for your kind inputs, suggestions, and tips!! It is much appreciated.

Regards,

Aharon