dprince

I've had my HP Pavilion xt178 notebook for about 3 years now and it's been serving me well. I knew going into it that I needed to purchase a laptop that wouldn't become obselete in the years to come. I have heard how difficult it is to upgrade these little space-saving machines so I tried my best to get the most for my money.

Anyway, fast-forward 3 years and my laptop seems to be slowly dying. The main problem that's been bugging me for a while now is the random restarts and shutdowns. I'm running Windows XP Home (all updates installed), 512 MB RAM, and a 32 MB ATI Mobility 6 video card. The reason I mention the video card is because when I'm playing graphically intense games like Guild Wars, the restart problem is much more likely to happen.

Now I already know somebody is going to say "Notebook computers aren't meant to play games unless you spend $2000+ on the thing and make sure you've got a high-end 128 MB graphics card." I'm just looking for any possible solutions to this problem.

I've already set all the in-game settings to the lowest possible settings and terminated any unneeded programs before loading up Guild Wars. When I checked Task Manager while the game is running I noticed all the system resources are being used (CPU Usuage: 100%). I also noticed in this past year my computer heats up very quickly, especially in the fan area (the air coming from the vent is very warm). Sorry for the long post, any suggestions would be appreciated.

Plaid13

well idunno how much skill you have but if it was me i would take it apart and dust it off real well with a can of compressed air. mostlikely a few years of dust has collected inside on the very limited bit of space allowed for airflow in those things to keep them cool. if that dosnt work theres always the standard windows maitnance. you know total format and reinstall of windows.

Just fyi games like that will almost always use 100% cpu power thats just how they work so its nothing out of the normal.

Before a total format i would suggest doing a good system defrag just so it has to work a little less to find the files it needs when playing. if that and cleaning out alll the dust dosnt work reformat and reinstall is the only option left that i can think of. but most likely your right and its overheating and its just because of all the dust.

dprince

I have started a defrag before, and it found a lot to defrag, however it started seeking out my music folders and specific songs. If I remember correctly it even rearranged or deleted some songs/albums. Is this normal? I've never defragged it since because of this. Also, I'm not sure what the best way is to go about clearing out the dust. Will this void the warranty if I take it apart to clean out its inside?

Psycho Dad

May not be your problem, but my son was usung a Gateway laptop that got extremely hot. Not only hot on the bottom but so hot that the power button would be hot to the touch. When trying to restart it, it would not boot unless I opened it up and stood it on end "bookstyle" to cool. After removing all the spyware, it began to run much cooler and no longer had this problem. The spyware (and there was an assload) apparently put such a strain on the cpu that it was as useful as a football bat. Just a thought...

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Plaid13

thats not normal at all you shouldnt ever lose any files during a defrag. might want to try running a antivirus or spyware detector like adaware or spybot search and destroy. only thing you should even notice after running a system defrag is maybe the computer running a little faster. anything else means something is really wrong.only thing i can think of that would make you lose files during a defrag is if maybe it lost power while moving a file. but other then that it shouldnt happen.

dprince

I'm not sure it actually deleted anything, although I do specifically remember seeing names of mp3 files it planned to rearrange. I like my music where it is, organized and in folders. Should the defragger move music files around, or am I just worrying. I think I saw the name of the music files briefly as it was scanning for files to defrag so I quickly cancelled it.

Plaid13

yeah when you defrag it moves everything so instead of files being chopped up into lots of little peices they are all together on one spot of the hard drive. so it takes a fragmented file thats scattered around in a lot of little bits and it puts them all together into one area.

Charlatan

I had a Dell that was running very hot... I found that there was some utility running in the background that was making the processor max out. I checked the web and found the program had made problems for others... it was non-essential. I kill the ulitity and my problem was solved.

This was a while ago, and I was running XP home at the time as well.

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cyrnel

Defragmenting doesn't do anything about arrangement of your folders or icons, or deleting files. It organizes the file pieces to be contiguous so each file can be accessed with minimal seeking. Sometimes this includes improving the organization so related files are located near each other, but none of this messes with what you see on the desktop or the contents of your folders.

As for your mp3 files, they take space like everything else* and may be fragmented or in the way of another file that's being worked on. If you watched long enough and remembered all your file names, you would recognize each of the files shown during a defrag though smaller files go by in a flash.

Anyway, I wouldn't defrag while you're having temperature problems. I've learned the hard way that exercising a machine to fix it can take a borderline system down the tubes. Listen to the guys above about airflow. If you can, set it on a fan to help airflow and see if the problems persist. If that takes care of things then you're in for a cleaning. If heat isn't the problem it may be time for a reinstall or at least a parallel install. (the glorious fix for all distant mystery problems )

(*The exception is that very tiny files may be stored entirely in the MFT. A bunch of very tiny files may eat up allocated MFT space and cause a fragmented MFT zone. That's why it's good to use a defrag utility that can optimize MFT's and pagefiles as well as normal files. Products like PerfectDisk or Diskeeper completely skunk NT/XP's defrag (which is really just a crippled version of Diskeeper).)

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There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195