Cpu 100%

[paccamura]

Hi,
I'm having problems with my laptop (Dell Precision M2300). few days ago the hard drive broke down. I got I new one and I first tried to install windows 7. after a while the CPU usage jumped to 100% and I couldn't use it anymore (I was also scared of overheating as this laptob had several problems with overheating in the past).

Persuaded that the problem was related with windows 7 I finally decided to move to ubuntu
it was running perfectly for the first minutes until I left youtube playing some music. when I logged in again the computer was very slow and I checked the CPU usage that was almost constantly 100%. the only applications that were running on the machine were firefox and the system manager that were sharing the cpu usage (like 70 and 30 or 50 and 50 or 30 and 70 depending on which application I was using more)...

I can't figure out what could be the problem
please help
thanks

[Hedgehog1]

Hi,
I'm having problems with my laptop (Dell Precision M2300). few days ago the hard drive broke down. I got I new one and I first tried to install windows 7. after a while the CPU usage jumped to 100% and I couldn't use it anymore (I was also scared of overheating as this laptob had several problems with overheating in the past).

Persuaded that the problem was related with windows 7 I finally decided to move to ubuntu
it was running perfectly for the first minutes until I left youtube playing some music. when I logged in again the computer was very slow and I checked the CPU usage that was almost constantly 100%. the only applications that were running on the machine were firefox and the system manager that were sharing the cpu usage (like 70 and 30 or 50 and 50 or 30 and 70 depending on which application I was using more)...

I can't figure out what could be the problem
please help
thanks

They only time I have seen this particular situation is when the CPU is indeed overheating, so the board slows the CPU speed down to deal with the increasing heat. As the CPU continues to heat, the CPU speed is further reduced until it is running slow enough that even simple tasks hit 100% CPU usage.

The fan cooling the CPU had gotten disconnected. This was a small Dell tower. Once the lose connector was reconnected, the system performed as expected.

I suspect you *may* be facing a similar situation. With a laptop, correcting such a situation is a little harder.

The Hedge

[paccamura]

They only time I have seen this particular situation is when the CPU is indeed overheating, so the board slows the CPU speed down to deal with the increasing heat. As the CPU continues to heat, the CPU speed is further reduced until it is running slow enough that even simple tasks hit 100% CPU usage.

The fan cooling the CPU had gotten disconnected. This was a small Dell tower. Once the lose connector was reconnected, the system performed as expected.

I suspect you *may* be facing a similar situation. With a laptop, correcting such a situation is a little harder.

The Hedge

Hi,
the fan is not disconnected as I can hear it blowing. On the other hand my computer gets very very hot, so I believe that you were right for what concerns the heat problem. Even when the laptop was still covered by warranty once I had to replace the motherboard and the fan... after that it was ok for a period and than slowly started to suffer again of overheating. Since I replaced the hard drive this problem looks more and more frequent, particularly on windows.
even though my laptop is 3 years old I believe that is still powerful enough for my needs...
I would really love to sort out this heating issue

thanks in advance for any further help

[Hedgehog1]

Correcting cooling issues in laptops can be hard. A complete cleaning of the vents (may require opening the case) is often needed. Also, the fan may be spinning, but not at the expected speed and this will cause the heat up.

I wish I had batter news, but: fan is slow (replace it) and/or open it and clean it are all I have.

Perhaps others have ideas?

The Hedge

[Yellow Pasque]

Theoretically, the system shouldn't overheat, even if running the CPU full speed for a while. Things like cleaning, better thermal paste, and laptop cooling pads might help, but even new laptops can overheat if the chassis is not designed well.

Flash is a notorious CPU hog, especially on linux where only 32-bit installs using nvidia binary driver (and Geforce8 or later GPU) get vide hardware acceleration. Using Flash-aid can help by replacing Flash with native media players on popular sites (like youtube) and greatly reducing CPU usage: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flash-aid/