Laptop overheating

[Brian Keay]

To Whom It May Concern:

I just installed Linux Mint 13 Maya with the Mate desktop, and I am finding that I can not run it on my laptop because it causes it to overheat, without even running any applications. I have run Red Hat for years on my home laptop, followed by Fedora, and Ubuntu on my work laptop, without any problems. If I let the laptop start up into Linux Mint without touching anything, it starts to cook dangerously. If I try to run any applications, as it heats up it runs so slow that it becomes unusable. If I pop it the freezer for a couple minutes, it will be usable for a little while until it overheats again, then it crawls to a stop and I can't use any applications. That it is dangerously hot is verified by the fact that if I restart into Windows 7, it refuses to start "to protect computer components from overheating." I have read on the Mint help forums that, unlike Windows, linux is designed to maximize performance and this causes computers to run hotter in linux. Clearly there is a serious bug if the computer overheats without any applications running and crawls to a stop when one tries to use an application. My HP Pavilion dv7-2170us is only two years old, and as I mentioned before, I have never experienced anything like this with previous installations.

Sincerely,

Brian Keay

[Oskar Wallgren (oskar.wallgren)]

Hi!

"If I pop it the freezer for a couple minutes, it will be usable for a little while until it overheats again, then it crawls to a stop and I can't use any applications."
Be careful. Especially the screen can take damage from this(cracks...).

The heat issue is known and is cured in later versions of the kernel (though it probably still runs hotter than Windows). I run 3.8 on my machine, which was overheating with anything after Mint 10, and it runs just fine.

I'd take it to the forum though for further help (more people over there):
http://forums.linuxmint.com/index.php

[Thies Thate (m-j-thate)]

Hi!,

Looks I have same problem here?

I installed on a HP Pavilion P6361FR Desktop dual boot Windows 7/LinuxMint13LTS for my family in Paris. (I Live in Holland)
Everything works fine exept de difference in powerconsumption.
The machine works silently under windows but under LinuxMint the power supply has to work constantly very hard. The system is not yet overheated but I think something has to be changed in the system.

Is there a solution?

Thanks, xantippe

[codeslinger (codeslinger)]

I had a similar problem, the 14.04 beta appears to have fixed the overheating, give it a try

[chemicalfan (mike-lumsden)]

Oskar is right, there was a bug in the kernel causing overheating due to the CPU not downclocking properly. This has been fixed in later kernels - try a "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade" to download a newer kernel (make sure that 'backports' is enabled in Software Sources)