(Firstly, I am not 100% sure that this is the right place to ask this question, and if not, I apologise, but I do hope you will be able to direct me to the right kind of place.)
My laptop is a bit over a year old, and in the last month or so the cooling fan has been turning itself on a LOT - far, far more than it used to. As an example, I used to have three or four complex webpages open at once along with media player running an mp3, and the fan would not go off. Now I can be doing no more than opening a short word document or two and the cooling fan will engage. I'm worried, because I - not being anything close to a computer expert - don't understand why the CPU would now be getting hot enough to start the fan when it could do the exact same thing before without heating.
It's not due to dust; when this started I went and vacuumed out every speck of dust in the vents and fan. My laptop is an Acer Extensa and the CPU is an intel Core 2 Duo processor, each of which are 2.00 Ghz. If it's relevant, I have 2GB of RAM and a 32-bit OS. I don't play video games or employ any program more complex than Photoshop. I've been watching the CPU usage history on my Task Manager to try to get some more data, and when the fan goes off it's almost always just after an extended spike in usage of both CPUs - I assume that's to be expected. Testing for temperature with my hand, I find the shell to be warm, but not hot enough to count as "hot" in my book; I'm afraid I can't compare it to anything, as I never before felt the need to check how warm the underside of my laptop was.
I would love it if someone could tell me that this is normal for CPUs when they've been used steadily for a year - or that it's not the CPU that's getting hot at all, though I think it is. I'm not overly bothered by the fan itself - I just want to know that there's nothing wrong with my machine. I back my files up often, but I really don't want to use this machine for another year or more and keep getting knots of fear in my stomach every time the fan begins to whirr.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can advise me.
-LBlanca
My laptop is a bit over a year old, and in the last month or so the cooling fan has been turning itself on a LOT - far, far more than it used to. As an example, I used to have three or four complex webpages open at once along with media player running an mp3, and the fan would not go off. Now I can be doing no more than opening a short word document or two and the cooling fan will engage. I'm worried, because I - not being anything close to a computer expert - don't understand why the CPU would now be getting hot enough to start the fan when it could do the exact same thing before without heating.
It's not due to dust; when this started I went and vacuumed out every speck of dust in the vents and fan. My laptop is an Acer Extensa and the CPU is an intel Core 2 Duo processor, each of which are 2.00 Ghz. If it's relevant, I have 2GB of RAM and a 32-bit OS. I don't play video games or employ any program more complex than Photoshop. I've been watching the CPU usage history on my Task Manager to try to get some more data, and when the fan goes off it's almost always just after an extended spike in usage of both CPUs - I assume that's to be expected. Testing for temperature with my hand, I find the shell to be warm, but not hot enough to count as "hot" in my book; I'm afraid I can't compare it to anything, as I never before felt the need to check how warm the underside of my laptop was.
I would love it if someone could tell me that this is normal for CPUs when they've been used steadily for a year - or that it's not the CPU that's getting hot at all, though I think it is. I'm not overly bothered by the fan itself - I just want to know that there's nothing wrong with my machine. I back my files up often, but I really don't want to use this machine for another year or more and keep getting knots of fear in my stomach every time the fan begins to whirr.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can advise me.
-LBlanca