Computer faulty or software?

[Ki Lo Watt]

My Daughter has a Compaq  laptop installed with windows 7 and it was working fine until about six months ago. After about an hour the laptop beeps and switches off. If you try a restart straight away it won't have it and turns off! I searched the problem on the Compaq site and various threads and it seemed to be heat related. After stripping the laptop down and checking components I came to the conclusion that there was a heat related fault on the motherboard as the base of the laptop got very hot after an hour. Cooling and ventilating had little effect and I decided it would be cheaper to get a new laptop which came with windows 8.

A few weeks ago I used my older Sony laptop now running Ubuntu and used Unetbootin to load a  USB drive with the latest Ubuntu release. I popped it in the Compaq USB slot and of we went. Booted to desktop in no time.

Now here is the odd thing! No overheating and shutting down when running Linux. So what's going on with windows and all that disk whirring and heat production? If all the windows enabled computers are generating more heat that must mean more power is consumed!

[martin]

My understanding is that Linux is far better written code, and that Windoze is layer upon layer of cr*p code, hence there's a lot more going on to do the same thing...... (hence my recent observations that the same computer fires up from standstill and has Chrome running in a third of the time when running Linux Mint rather than the execrable Windoze 7)
Having spent some years now running Ubuntu, and latterly Mint, going back to Windoze is back to the dark ages of running through stodge, viruses and all the other "joys" of Microsoft computing....

[knighty]

even if windows was pushing the CPU hard and Linux now isn't.... it shouldn't make that much of a difference

unless maybe there was a virus etc.. which was working the cpu 100% ?
(like a bitcoin mining virus etc.)



Martin is going to hate this, but windows 7 is pretty damn good and pretty damn quick - especially once you turn off a few of the options which make it look 'pretty'

[martin]

Well, this computer has both installed "side by side" (Mint and "7"), mainly so I can run "View NX2" and "Silkypix" for Raw image manipulation using Windoze, and frankly, it's a running joke every time I fire up Windoze - it's SOOOOOO slow firing up that you can wander off, walk the dogs, and cook a seven course meal before it's even worth trying to fire up the imaging programmes - when they're finally up and running they'll often freeze the whole thing solid (ctrl-alt-del, don't be silly!) and you have to resort to switching the bally thing off (this just doesn't happen in Mint - ever!)

I do agree that it looks like KLW's install may well have a trojan or similar making things even worse than normal............

[Ki Lo Watt]

I don't mind Windows 7 BUT....Why does that little circle appear for ages every time you start it up hogging resources even after extensive tinkering to stop cr** loading at start up. AND DON'T SWITCH OF WINDOWS BECAUSE IT IS UP DATING. Windows seems to be hardware intensive.

Definitely no trojan or virus on the Compaq. I have been Hijacked in windows on an my old Sony laptop and I run various checking utilities if I use Windows. Wasted many hours checking for shat on the windows. Come to think of it that's more code to get the old disk/CPU/memory heated up.

[martin]

Has it got Symantec (Norton) "slow your computer to a crawl" antivirus on it?

[Ki Lo Watt]

Should also point out that I never connect to the Internet before I have virus checked and the overheating on the Compaq appeared with any combination of on line/off line and battery only and or charger supplying power.

Symantec!!!! Every time I got a new PC I ditched ALL bloat ware....well when I used to run Windoze.

That's what I like about Linux. You can chose a distro which fits your needs. I am running Ubuntu because it handles my printers seamlessly. I don't mind unity.... it just works.   

[Mostie]

I have to agree with Knighty, windows 7 is ok, don't bother trying to run it on an old machine.

Also have 2 machines running Xubuntu which I like   

[clivejo]

Is the heat being generated by the CPU or the GPU?  Sometimes having all "Special FX" enabled can heat up the GPU very fast for little or no benefit only looks pretty.  Try booting up into safe mode and see how it reacts. 

[Other-Power]

My i3 laptop suffers similarly if I run anything that demands graphics.  I have cleaned the heat sink but its just poor design sadly.

Cheers