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I have a HP 8730W Laptop that has been installed with Windows 7 since RTM. Over time, all updates has been installed. Lately, I have noticed quite an increase in the CPU fan usage. Earlier, when idle, the fan was not noticeable at all. But now it spins all the time.
I just installed Core Temp and right now when I only have Outlook idle, and writing this in Internet Explorer 9, it reports that the idle core temps are 60° and 61° C (140/141°F). I have no clue what temperatures I had before, but the Laptop itself is indeed much warmer now than before. So here's what I have tried:

  • Opened the keyboard/case and looked to see if there were any dust collecting up in the fan, but it was surprisingly clean.
  • Re-paved with Windows 7 SP1

None of these have helped.
Other specs:

  • Intel Core 2 Duo T9600
  • nVidia Quadro FX 2700M drivers 261.28
  • 8GB DDR2 RAM
  • Intel 160GB SSD G2

Running resource monitor for a while shows that the top average CPU usage consumer (some ~6% now when idle) is iexplore.exe. So the obvious thing would be to rollback to Internet Explorer 8. But if I use Chrome instead, it doesn't change much of the behaviour.

EDIT: Uninstalled Internet Explorer 9 and after reboot, average temp is still 61C just idling.

Has anyone noticed something similar or can give me some advice?

4 Answers 4

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I think it was the latest HP BIOS version F13 that is the cause.
Downgraded to version F12 and the idle temp is now 48C instead of 61C.

EDIT: The behaviour is indeed much better, but see my comment below.

EDIT/UPDATE: I have now found out that this is some kind of physical cooling problem, and not BIOS related. If I have the laptop in a normal operating angle, ie putting it on table the idle temp is anywhere between 50-60 degrees and it can easily get to 70-80 under some load. But if I put the laptop on its side, with the fan outlet point upwards (causing the air to flow more naturally) the idle temp is some 35 degrees and it's very quick to fall down to those temps after some load. The cooling fan has just recently started to make some weird ticking noises. I have ordered a replacement from an Ebay seller, let's see what that leads up to.

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  • If this fixes your issue, you can mark your answer as the solution, you will get no reps for it, but it will help others when searching the boards.
    – Moab
    Mar 28, 2011 at 14:17
  • @Moab. Yes, that was my intention. However, I'm not 100% satisfied with the behavior still. It seems that once I have done some intensive work causing a higher temperature, it doesn't seem to go back to a cooler temp once idling again.
    – Magnus
    Mar 30, 2011 at 18:35
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It may be very useful if you have an parallel OS installed (such a Linux Distribution) to test if you have the same result there too.

If not, download an Live Ubuntu CD, run it and check if the heat exposure of your Laptop differs on ubuntu or if its the same like in Win7.

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  • Created and booted into Ubuntu Live from an USB stick. The average CPU is even worse; 1 core about 4-5%, the other averages around 14%. (Needless to say, CPU fan is pumping air like never before..). What the heck has happened? Maybe I should rollback to previous system BIOS from HP.
    – Magnus
    Mar 27, 2011 at 17:05
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HP G62 core i5, W7 64bit, no difference on mine.

Use task manager to see if any application is still running (hung) when it should not be, for instance iexplore is running when you have all IE windows closed.

Perform a clean boot, see if the issue is still present.

Clean Boot Procedure

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  • No, nothing that simple. And, as I said, a complete reformat and re-install did nothing.
    – Magnus
    Mar 27, 2011 at 17:05
  • Did you update your drivers?
    – Moab
    Mar 27, 2011 at 17:22
  • Latest drivers for all devices. Clean Boot Procedure did nothing. See my answer regarding the HP BIOS.
    – Magnus
    Mar 27, 2011 at 17:53
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I noticed that since I installed IE9 on my Windows 7 64-bit system (HP-1207us) whenever IE9 is open (multiple tabs - usually including Gmail and Facebook) it is running both cores of my C2D P8600 at around 40% which causes the system fan to run at high speed constantly. Solution - use Google Chrome.

I also noticed that Sidebar was using a lot of processor so I closed it as well - though it wasn't nearly as problematic as IE9.

IE9 is slick and fast but the processor load isn't worth it for me.

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