Fan temperature 160* Farenheit

[Ztruker]

Be meticulous when dis-assembling the laptop.

I use a piece of 8.5x11 paper. I draw a picture of the bottom of the laptop with the different removable sections outlined then as I remove screws I place them about where they came from. You can do the same for the top. Just don't bump the paper or all the screws get messed up

You can also take some pictures with a digital camera during the dis-assembly process.

Be real careful when removing cables and connectors not to damage the ZIF (Zero Insertion Force)and LIF (Low Insertion Force) connectors. Take your time.

 

[popeye]

Sounds good. I've got that in the mail as well. I'm going to try this this weekend, will update on how it goes. I'm a little bit leery, but I just can't stomach the repair cost of stores around here, which mostly seem to be 'virus cleaners' and not really guys who would have any more technical experience with this than I do. I found a teardown PDF from HP that covers my model, so I'm going to go forward with that and just document everything very slowly. I don't have any anti-static stuff -- is that important and is there anything I can do easily without having to buy a strap?

Make sure you aren't wearing nylon and touch some grounded metal before you start. Should be good to go.

 

[authorandrew]

I gave in. I'm paying a guy twenty bucks to do it. Here's hoping that goes a lot smoother. I just couldn't justify the risk.

 

[Netrick]

Hi authorandrew,
No shame in asking for help if you are not sure.
On a side note, I looked up the specifications for the 3170se Beats Edition and see that it has the i5-3210M processor. That processor shows to have a maximum temperature of 105c or 221 degrees Fahrenheit. That seems pretty hot but apparently you are well within its specifications at 160 degrees Fahrenheit.
You also stated the disk never stops spinning. That points to something happening in the background that may be putting a load on the system and making the processor work harder thereby generating more heat. Have you tried isolating the source of the disk activity? The usual suspect would be an antivirus scan or a system maintenance task like defragmenting the hard disk. Just a few thoughts I wanted to throw out there. I hope this gets sorted out for you and let us know how it goes.
Cheers.

 

[authorandrew]

Hi Netrick,
I've seen that it's within the specs, but it still worries me. When I rotate the system (so the keyboard is vertical) I hear a very odd humming which didn't happen previously, but has started in the next couple of months.

The disk goes quiet, but the fan itself never stops spinning. There was a svchost.exe task that frequently uses a lot of resources (I posted a link to it earlier in the thread), but it appears to be connected to Windows Firewall and I'm not certain how to configure that to use any fewer resources.

 

[Netrick]

Hi again. I must admit that your issue with CPU Hogging: Firewall, Diagnostic Policy, & Base Filtering problem is a bit out of my realm. There are a few others that have reported this problem according to a Google search such as here.
Answers: cpu usage - Windows 7 Firewall services consuming all CPU
They state;

Don't know the exact cause, but when BFE component of svchost starts hogging cpu, the right action is to restart the windows firewall (from services.msc). If you try to restart BFE it most probably will not succeed.

If it were my own computer, I'd try it to see if the CPU starts acting right again, but I would be hesitant to try it on someone else's computer. In any event, if you can manage to get that CPU hogging problem fixed, I'd bet your temperature would decrease too. Best of luck.

 

[authorandrew]

I restarted the service but it's still using a lot of memory. I also got the fan replaced and that's dropped the temperature by about 30-40 degrees. It's running at 110-130 now and the fan sounds a lot more normal, even though it is running a good bit. I'm guessing the problem was a combination of the old fan (original fan, very dusty and on its last legs, according to the tech guy) and this CPU hogging. With the one taken care of, maybe now I can figure out the other. I'm a lot less worried about 110 degrees than 160, so that's good.
Andrew