Mysterious Ram Usage And Laptop Overheating care to heat up your coffee on my laptop?

[Baniboy 3]

Okay, so Cindy, my laptop, isn't doing very well.
Lately things have started to fall apart, just like what HP apparently designs their products for, to fall apart after the warranty is over.
Anyway, I have noticed that my laptop overheats. The other day I was playing Perfect World on minimum settings, and this thing got really hot. Hotter than ever before. I had played this game before for hours without any problems whatsoever. And after overheating, starts the lagging. I still keep pushing it, and it suddenly shuts down. Currently I'm using an USB fan and pointing it to the laptop to cool it down and play. But that's not a very good way to handle the situation I suppose. Many of the more demanding tasks are causing overheating.

I did open this laptop up a while back to replace a hard drive, you think I've managed to screw the contents up somehow? Like bump the heatsink off or something? It was very tightly packed inside..

And then there's the RAM problem. I used to use only 700-900 MB ou of 3 GB RAM back in the days with Vista. Now it's gone suddenly to +1GB. I use ubuntu, used to use around 350 MB with no programs running. Nowadays I boot up, and I see the 370 at first, then it somehow mysteriously builds up to 600+ slowly? What the hell?

My laptop model is HP DV-7 1090eo. The specs:

Processor: AMD Turion X2 Ultra Dual-Core mobile ZM-80, 2.10 GHzRAM: 3 GB, 800 MHz
Videocard: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450, 256 MB
Memory: 250 GB Hitachi HDD & Western Digital 250 GB HDD
OS: Ubuntu and Vista Premium

Any help? Thanks very much.

[mahesh2k 0]

Strange your RAM is getting used for a lot. I don't know what is the cause of it. By the way, who is cindy ?

[truefusion 3]

I did open this laptop up a while back to replace a hard drive, you think I've managed to screw the contents up somehow? Like bump the heatsink off or something? It was very tightly packed inside..

I would have expected it to have started acting at that time if it were do to the hard drive replacement. Personally, i would just check for dust; maybe reopen the case and dust things out.

 

And then there's the RAM problem. I used to use only 700-900 MB ou of 3 GB RAM back in the days with Vista. Now it's gone suddenly to +1GB. I use ubuntu, used to use around 350 MB with no programs running. Nowadays I boot up, and I see the 370 at first, then it somehow mysteriously builds up to 600+ slowly? What the hell?

I wouldn't say that is uncommon.

 

By the way, who is cindy ?

It's the name he gave his laptop (well, assuming it was him).

[Jonnyabc 0]

It's the name he gave his laptop (well, assuming it was him).

Assuming that Cindy isn't really an impostor...Cindy's evil twin that is.


About Cindy...or her evil twin...sounds as though you might have a lot of dust inside her. I thought mine was losing the CPU fan but it was really dust. His name is Donald, by the way, but he doesn't quack like a duck as well as he used to. As far as the RAM, sounds like you may be using more graphics effects, even in Ubuntu. Can't say for sure on either of them.
Edited March 19, 2010 by Jonnyabc (see edit history)

[Baniboy 3]

Okay, I tried to open it up, but I don't have the small screwdriver to fit the screws. I don't even remember how I opened it the first time.So, until I go buy one, I used a vacuum and aimed it at the cooler's hole. Amazingly, that actually worked! It does heat up, but not even near how much it did before the quick vacuum.And about the RAM problem, it builds up without any reason. I don't start any additional programs so it just builds up all by itself on Ubuntu. I'm just a little curious because it didn't use that much RAM before.

Edited March 20, 2010 by Baniboy (see edit history)