Overheating laptop

June 1, 2010 7:46 AM

Since upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7 Professional, my Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop keeps overheating and switching itself off.

Even with Vista, the internal fans never seemed to keep it cool enough, so it is permanently attached to a laptop stand with a USB fan.

A friend upgraded it for me, and it stayed cool without the laptop stand for an hour, since then I have installed my internet router software, AVG Free, and my music, pictures and documents folders, which are all pretty hefty. I kept the movies and TV shows on my external hard drive as they took up a lot of space, I'd rather not do this with the other folders though, but will if it will help.

I've probably missed some information, sorry, any ideas?

posted by ellieBOA to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Best answer: I can't speak from experience but after a quick google it seems like a common problem with Windows 7 and Dell laptops.

I found this, which is a guide to cleaning out your fan. It should definitely help out.
posted by Rax at 7:58 AM on June 1, 2010 [1 favorite]

Even with Vista, the internal fans never seemed to keep it cool enough, so it is permanently attached to a laptop stand with a USB fan.

I have the same issue with my Dell laptop. I'm not sure if your's has it, but mine has some sort of BIOS performance setting that dynamically adjusts how fast it runs. Turning that off (so that it always uses the "low performance" setting) reduced the overheating issues.
posted by burnmp3s at 8:01 AM on June 1, 2010

It might help to make sure you've got the most up to date BIOS and drivers from support.dell.com.
posted by sockpup at 8:07 AM on June 1, 2010

I've had nothing but problems keeping my now dead Inspiron 1525 cool. I didn't expect much from a sub $500 notebook to begin with, but it was pretty powerful for the price I paid for it. The only thing that I could do to keep it cool was to run Windows XP. The fans and heatsinks are pretty cheap, and that particular laptop went in to Dell for a replacement on the heatsinks and fans, didn't make much of a difference after a few weeks it was back to the same problems. I am not much of a laptop expert, but you might be able to replace the heatsinks / heatpipes and the CPU fans relatively easily with new parts sourced from Dell or elsewhere. Using a high quality thermal paste (Arctic Silver) when doing this will also help heat dissapation.
posted by ganzhimself at 8:25 AM on June 1, 2010

Best answer: Another thing to make sure you routinely do is to buy a can of that compressed air and fully spray every opening you see on that laptop (while it's off) until no more dust comes out. I have an Inspirion 1505 laptop running Win7 and about every 3 to 6 months I have to do that or the fans will start running constantly and loudly. I don't think they designed it to eliminate dust buildup, so if its never been cleaned out it will be choking and not getting enough air flow.
posted by msbutah at 9:25 AM on June 1, 2010

Best answer: If you're always using it with a laptop stand, plug it in and use it without a battery. Some batteries can get really warm (or at least prevent cooling).

Buy compressed air and clean out all the air vents and fans.

Turn down performance settings.

Make sure you have all the correct/latest drivers.

Look for BIOS settings that help.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:57 AM on June 1, 2010

Response by poster: Thanks everybody, think I will try cleaning the fans out on the inside, the BIOS and drivers are up to date as it was a clean install very recently.
posted by ellieBOA at 1:33 AM on June 2, 2010