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Portables Software Hardware

Monitoring Your Laptop's Health? 67

Posted by Cliff from the digital-vitals dept.
paulius_g asks: "I have an eMachines laptop running Windows and I would like to know how today's geeks monitor their laptops caracteristics (CPU temperature, fan speeds, SMART, etc.) There are software to monitor normal motherboards, but laptop motherboards are usually unsupported on these kinds of software. I am in desperate need in such a software as my laptop overheats a lot while the fan is running at a low speed. So, what do you use to monitor your laptop?"
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Monitoring Your Laptop's Health? More

Monitoring Your Laptop's Health?

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  • duh (Score:3, Informative)

    by Bin_jammin ( 684517 ) <Binjammin@gmail.com> on Friday March 04, 2005 @06:47PM (#11849380)
    blow out the dust from the heat sink over the processor, and the one over the video card it it has one. dust makes for a great insulator, all the fan activity in the world won't help you out if you don't blow it out.

  • My Monitoring Method (Score:5, Funny)

    by randomiam ( 514027 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @06:49PM (#11849400) Homepage
    Well, as a 12" PB user, I just monitor my left wrist for minor burns.

  • Speedfan (Score:2, Informative)

    by Wooo ( 613477 )
    I use Speedfan [tucows.com]

    Not sure how it will work on a laptop but give it a try
    • it doesnt work on my dell.

      Firstly, I'm running defer's i8k utils (fan control program).
      First it BSOD with ACPI.sys complaint, then i reboot.

      Kill i8k utils, run speefan, it shows blank output. OH well.

  • GKrellm (Score:3, Informative)

    by brilinux ( 255400 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @06:53PM (#11849433) Journal
    I do not normally boot my laptop into windows (I usually use Debian and NetBSD), but GkrellM is a nice tool: http://www.redbog.com/products/gkrellm.aspx [redbog.com]. Like I said, though, I do not use it too much, so I do recall exactly how capable it is on Windows, but it ought to be useful. Good luck; my laptop has similar problems.
    • Oh, and that should be "Debian or NetBSD". I do not run them at the same time. And I do not know how well GKrellM works in NetBSD; I have been having problems lately, like my Prism Cardbus WiFi adapter not really working, and ACPI acting up in it, so I usually use Debian.
  • lmsensors. But since you are using Windows, I would suggest petitioning Gateway, or Microsoft to supply you with the tools you need to monitor your laptop.

    You might check and see if there are support tools on the CD's that came with the laptop, or possibly monitoring tools available from the support pages of eMachines web pages, relavent to your laptop. I know that simalar tools are available for download from Toshiba and IBM, two companies I have had laptops from. That is no evidence that such tools exist
    • Fair points. But my impression is that if the original poster is aware that his machine is overheating a lot, that sort of indicates to me that there is already something wrong (e.g. as one poster mentioned, dust on components) which he should get fixed before he loses the thing.

      It's better to fix the problem now than to wait until the thing fails, which Sod's law tells us will happen at the worst possible time.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @06:55PM (#11849450)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I have an eMachines laptop running Windows...

    Well, there's your problem right there...

    • Actually, from what I've heard, the eMachines LAPTOPS are fine. It's the desktops that are crap.

      • I can verify this. I've owned an eMachines M5312 now for about a year and I've had no problems at all. Difficult finding drivers for the crappy IGP320M chipset that have reasonable 3D acceleration (currently trying the latest Omega drivers... no luck there) but other than that, the laptop works great.

        Well... there is the broken DVD/CD-RW... but that is due to a fellow student gratuitously sitting down in the desk next to me just as the drive popped open... *sigh* =[

  • motherboard monitor (Score:5, Informative)

    by supersuckers ( 841107 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @07:00PM (#11849484) Homepage
    Ok, everyone knows on linux you use gkrellm, but on windows it's gotta be motherboard monitor http://mbm.livewiredev.com/ [livewiredev.com]
    • Everyone should keep in mind that MBM is horribly incorrect on an awful lot of sensor hardware. Don't believe anything MBM tells you until you run a tool from your vendor (or chipset manufacturer) that tells you the same thing.
  • It may seem like your laptop is a little warm, but most laptops are designed to throtle the fan speed so that the cpu is cool enough and to conserve the battery at the same time. Most CPUs are designed to stand 70 - 80 degrees celcius temperatures and still be safe.

    I wouldn't worry about it.
    • My guess is that by "overheating" he is referring to "overheating causing to laptop to automatically shut down". Check your user manual. You may be obstructing an important vent during use. One thing that I have noticed, new laptop users sometimes don't realise that you can't obstruct the vents. Apple builds their vents in places you can't obstruct them, but everyone else puts them in places less well thought out (I've even seen them on the bottom of a laptop).
    • Owning a laptop that has gone back for service twice due to damage caused by prolonged overheating, I'd say to definately worry about it.

      Luckilly Xorg supports Dynamic clocks on Radeon GPUs, otherwise I get about eleven minutes of use before my screen begins to corrupt the image.

  • Po' Man's CPU Thermometer (Score:5, Funny)

    by XsynackX ( 775111 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @07:34PM (#11849669)
    Step 1) Take your laptop off your lap.
    If Step 1 cannot be completed because it is melted to your legs, the temperature is too high.

  • SMART (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DustMagnet ( 453493 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @07:41PM (#11849702) Journal
    There have been lots of good replies here, but so far no one has talked about SMART. SMART has warned me of serious hard disk problems before a crisis a number of times. I did a hard search and the only SMART monitoring program I could find for Windows has been spammed on USENET. I won't buy from spammers.
    • hard search? pretty shitty search, maybe try a soft search next time.

      for example, speedfan [almico.com] does it. but seriously though.. smart gives sometimes shifty results.

      seriously though, this guy should know quite easily if he's emachine is overheating or not: just leave it decoding a dvd or whatever. if it fails then yeah, something is wrong with it. if he is just worrying over his lap getting warm and wanting some magic feelgood number program.. then just about anything that shows him some number, any number,

    • Re:SMART (Score:3, Interesting)

      by confused one ( 671304 )
      Most manufacturers have a SMART monitor utility. Otherwise, look for smartmon tools.

  • MobMeter (Score:3, Informative)

    by thomasdn ( 800430 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @08:19PM (#11849891) Homepage Journal
    I use MobileMeter [cmu.edu]. It works perfectly for the three laptops I've owned and every one of my friends's laptops.
  • If your ACPI is messed up, that could explain it.

    Try booting up Knoppix or Kanotix and see if the problem disappears or the boot messages complain about ACPI.


    • Also, a few laptops actually use software to monitor the CPU temp and then speed up/slow down the fan as appropriate. Obviously, your laptop will overheat in any OS other than Windows and if Windows was reinstalled, the software might not have been installed.

      Since this is an eMachines, I wouldn't doubt that this is the case for a second.

      My suggestion to the guy: Get a real laptop. I have a low-end Dell Inspiron that always runs quiet and cool. It is well-supported by Linux and BSD and even outperformed a
  • does the computer keep working as expected? then it's not overheating. what would you do to the thing anyways? try to take it back? "yes it's most certainly overheating! look at these numbers!!" -"but sir, those are perfectly acceptable, good day."

    stupid numbers that mean nothing in the long run.. you don't really neeed much of them. but try speedfan for example.

  • 2 words: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by epsilon720 ( 307234 )
    Smoke detector.

    Yes, my laptop is fine now, but it was a rough couple of weeks.

  • The question is not how, but why? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @08:58PM (#11850092) Homepage Journal
    Why do you even worry about your laptop overheating? Standard consumer and business systems are designed to be OK provided the environment doesn't exceed 85 degrees F. (At least that's what it says on the A+ exam.) The only people who need to worry about their systems overheating are people who customize -- case modders, overclockers, or people who've replaced fans and power supplies with quieter versions.

    I once considered doing that last thing myself, so I did a little Googling and found a couple of gadgets that let you stick a temperature prope through a case slot so you can check for overheating. You'll have to find them for yourself.

    In any case, suppose your laptop is overheating. What are you going to do about it?

    • where it's above 85 half the year. :)
    • The only hardware customization I'd done to my work laptop was adding cat hair to the fan, which I've subcontracted to several of the local felines. Nonetheless, a month or so ago, my laptop started announcing that its cooling system had failed and that it needed to shut down immediately, and that I'd better save my work and press the OK dialog box when I was done. I'd typically get about 15 minutes of uptime before this happened. Fortunately I had relatively recent backups, so I only had to do a week or
  • I have an Acer Travelmate 274xc. Speedfan, MBM, and MobilMeter do not work for me, they all say my mainboard is not supported, any suggestions for me?
  • Why use software to monitor heat, when you can pull the heat away from the system? Check this laptop cooler out. Nexus TDD 3000 Heat Pipe [nexustek.nl]. It uses no fans. It makes no noise and uses zero power. There's a chart on the bottom that shows the difference it makes in cooling.

  • I've heard that... (Score:3, Funny)

    by bergeron76 ( 176351 ) * on Friday March 04, 2005 @10:46PM (#11850536) Homepage
    ... iBooks are a great solution to eMachines (and most other x86) issues.

    Flame Disclaimer: I don't have an iBook, yet.

  • eMachines laptops have a known overheating problem (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jemm ( 747958 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @05:32PM (#11855153)
    eMachines laptops have a known overheating problem which causes these machines to simply power down when they reach a certain temperature.

    Overheating is caused by two factors on these machines: First unsufficient air flow through the cpu heatsink and fan caused by poor engineering. Second, dust buildup behind the heat sink.

    The issue with dust buildup and system overheating is well known, see [http://www.dexplor.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=171 ].

    The solution to your problem involves periodicly clearing the heat sink of dust, and running a freeware cpu throttling program such as speedswitchxp. There is also a patch from Microsoft here [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?f amilyid=2898f8dd-10f8-4107-9f7b-16c5a525de1e&displ aylang=en] for XP which provides some cpu scaling support for AMD Powernow processors.

    If you can get support from eMachines, send them your laptop and have them install a more powerfull fan for you.

    eMachines did not manufacture these laptops. They were designed and manufactured by a company in Taiwan called Arima and were branded eMachines in North America. In Europe they were sold under the Medion label, and in Australia under TPG Online.

    If I remember correctly, these machines do not reliably provide sensor data to any programs including MBM5. I don't think that has ever been fixed by eMachines.

    As a further annoyance, eMachines' stock bios is full of errors, the most significant of which is that the cpu tables are incorrect. You will notice this if you try to install ACPI under linux.
  • use this excellent untility: i8kfan

    http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/

    • I'm not sure if it works for other brands, but I know the program was originally written for the Dell Inspiron 8000 series (hence the name) I do know that it works pretty good for other models of Dell laptops. I use it on my Inspiron 5150 and it works well. You can program custom settings for the fan(s). (At what temp to speed up) Also different profiles can be set up, if you want it quieter in certain situations.

      Unrelated to I8kfan, I also use Winbar, available at http://www.winbar.nl/ [winbar.nl].

      It runs along the

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