dell n 4010 gpu/cpu overheating issue, how to fix it?

i have a dell n4010 laptop since 4 years that is overheating from day 1. being a novice intially, i didn't know what to do about it.in the beginning , gpu drivers were causing it to heat up, after downloading proper ones issue diminished somewhat. couple of years down the line it went on freezing , i knew it needed cleaning but opening it up was real night mare and gave up since again i had never opened a desktop - let alone laptop and was sure of messing it up.i had to make do with infrequent use solved it to some extent with reinstall. then after my hdd started showing errors 4 months back i had no option but to take it to professional. who again will not open it telling that since whole of it has to be opened just to get to hdd, it is better to format and see if hdd still works and it did.he even scared me that after he opens it up and puts it back together, it may not work properly again

now i found a job that requires me to work from home, so other than having my alternative desktop, i need to have this laptop too in its element so that i don't mess up my clients work in case my desktop has issues,so i took the effort of opening and cleaning it up (and will be replacing the hdd soon), and was successful.it bought down temperatures by 10 deg

i am yet to change thermal paste will do it soon-(it exists only on cpu and not at gpu), cpu is at 70 rarely at 60 deg celcius(better than 80 it used to be since past 2 years).
but my main problem is gpu, it remains v. hot - i know that has always been very hot always hot since i always observed that area was hot near the mousepad and to the left of it. now that i know that there is gpu at that spot, i know it was always very hot to touch there.

when i opened my case, the gpu had thermal pad the lightblue colored that was brown on one side(due to overheating) . i feel replacing the thermal pad will not solve my problem since it existed when my laptop was new . i want to know better alternatives to thermal pad .of course i intend to apply new paste to the cpu, there exists a thick one i feel that may be preventing it from cooling properly.

also i kept my case open from below to touch ram and it also feels too hot when laptop is running.

one more thing- is it worth replacing the hdd -although it is not quite dead and errors have vanished after a format, but i want to ensure that i have a laptop that doesn't fail unexpectedly. i am confused now since i feel after running it for years at high temperature-- full one year at no less than 80 deg celcius, and must have been 60 earlier and not less, i may have a laptop that is well past its life...
so it may be better to sell it than to replace parts time and again.

any suggestions? thanks in advance.

On Tuesday, March 25, 2014 12:50:52 PM UTC-4, par k wrote:
i have a dell n4010 laptop since 4 years that is overheating from day 1. being a novice intially, i didn't know what to do about it.in the beginning , gpu drivers were causing it to heat up, after downloading proper ones issue diminished somewhat. couple of years down the line it went on freezing , i knew it needed cleaning but opening it up was real night mare and gave up since again i had never opened a desktop - let alone laptop and was sure of messing it up.i had to make do with infrequent use solved it to some extent with reinstall. then after my hdd started showing errors 4 months back i had no option but to take it to professional. who again will not open it telling that since whole of it has to be opened just to get to hdd, it is better to format and see if hdd still works and it did.he even scared me that after he opens it up and puts it back together, it may not work properly again



now i found a job that requires me to work from home, so other than having my alternative desktop, i need to have this laptop too in its element so that i don't mess up my clients work in case my desktop has issues,so i took the effort of opening and cleaning it up (and will be replacing the hdd soon), and was successful.it bought down temperatures by 10 deg



i am yet to change thermal paste will do it soon-(it exists only on cpu and not at gpu), cpu is at 70 rarely at 60 deg celcius(better than 80 it used to be since past 2 years).

but my main problem is gpu, it remains v. hot - i know that has always been very hot always hot since i always observed that area was hot near the mousepad and to the left of it. now that i know that there is gpu at that spot, i know it was always very hot to touch there.



when i opened my case, the gpu had thermal pad the lightblue colored that was brown on one side(due to overheating) . i feel replacing the thermal pad will not solve my problem since it existed when my laptop was new . i want to know better alternatives to thermal pad .of course i intend to apply new paste to the cpu, there exists a thick one i feel that may be preventing it from cooling properly.



also i kept my case open from below to touch ram and it also feels too hot when laptop is running.



one more thing- is it worth replacing the hdd -although it is not quite dead and errors have vanished after a format, but i want to ensure that i have a laptop that doesn't fail unexpectedly. i am confused now since i feel after running it for years at high temperature-- full one year at no less than 80 deg celcius, and must have been 60 earlier and not less, i may have a laptop that is well past its life...

so it may be better to sell it than to replace parts time and again.



any suggestions? thanks in advance.

I think that it is worth installing MSI's Afterburner and using its settings to UNDERCLOCK whatever graphics chip is in there. Sounds like it is a separate ATI Radeon, rather than Intel's graphics. After installing Afterburner, run it, set every possible setting to the minimum, save the settings and tell Afterburner to use these settings at startup. Underclocking runs chips at a lower clock speed, thereby producing less heat. I used Afterburner on some laptops with notorious-for-failure nVidia chips with some success.

Download and run Defraggler and use it to examine the health of your hard drive. If there is even one reallocated sector, replace the drive.

Or you could download and run GSmartControl, which also lets you examine the error log kept by the drive.

You can find any of these fine and free programs with a simple Google search.

I have been completely unimpressed with the two Dell Inspiron R-series I have seen, the 14R and the 15R. Getting to the hard drive in these systems is a major pain in the ass. You have to disassemble the whole system just to pull the drive. Whatever happened to drive bays, Michael Dell? Sheesh, you wonder why Dell is losing market share??? ... Ben Myers

Thanks for your suggestions Ben. will try these out and get back on them in few days. it is an intel hd graphics as mentioned in the specification, gpu chip also has intel written on it.
i have never done an underclock/overclock. max i have done is open desktop/laptop clean it,reset bios, put thermal paste , -- all with the help of videos on the internet.
is it simple enough to be done by a person with this much knowledge.i mean how do i set for minimum values you had mentioned? are these default minimum.will i run through other issues when i do it? what could they be and any suggestions on how to overcome them.

before i reinstalled, Other than 12 bad sectors i had found on my hdd which wouldn't go away with chkdsk /r/f (and went with format), once my hdd gave me bad spool header error (on blue screen).there were other issues which i don't remember now that made me check my hdd for errors.

after reinstalling my hdd, my wireless drivers had gone corrupt in few days and i had to do a system restore to get them back.

is it a reason enough to throw away my hdd or do i still need to check with programs you mentioned?

also even if it is formatted, will it still have previous error logs stored somewhere in it?



Thanks in advance.

On Tuesday, March 25, 2014 12:50:52 PM UTC-4, par k wrote:
i have a dell n4010 laptop since 4 years that is overheating from day 1. being a novice intially, i didn't know what to do about it.in the beginning , gpu drivers were causing it to heat up, after downloading proper ones issue diminished somewhat. couple of years down the line it went on freezing , i knew it needed cleaning but opening it up was real night mare and gave up since again i had never opened a desktop - let alone laptop and was sure of messing it up.i had to make do with infrequent use solved it to some extent with reinstall. then after my hdd started showing errors 4 months back i had no option but to take it to professional. who again will not open it telling that since whole of it has to be opened just to get to hdd, it is better to format and see if hdd still works and it did.he even scared me that after he opens it up and puts it back together, it may not work properly again



now i found a job that requires me to work from home, so other than having my alternative desktop, i need to have this laptop too in its element so that i don't mess up my clients work in case my desktop has issues,so i took the effort of opening and cleaning it up (and will be replacing the hdd soon), and was successful.it bought down temperatures by 10 deg



i am yet to change thermal paste will do it soon-(it exists only on cpu and not at gpu), cpu is at 70 rarely at 60 deg celcius(better than 80 it used to be since past 2 years).

but my main problem is gpu, it remains v. hot - i know that has always been very hot always hot since i always observed that area was hot near the mousepad and to the left of it. now that i know that there is gpu at that spot, i know it was always very hot to touch there.



when i opened my case, the gpu had thermal pad the lightblue colored that was brown on one side(due to overheating) . i feel replacing the thermal pad will not solve my problem since it existed when my laptop was new . i want to know better alternatives to thermal pad .of course i intend to apply new paste to the cpu, there exists a thick one i feel that may be preventing it from cooling properly.



also i kept my case open from below to touch ram and it also feels too hot when laptop is running.



one more thing- is it worth replacing the hdd -although it is not quite dead and errors have vanished after a format, but i want to ensure that i have a laptop that doesn't fail unexpectedly. i am confused now since i feel after running it for years at high temperature-- full one year at no less than 80 deg celcius, and must have been 60 earlier and not less, i may have a laptop that is well past its life...

so it may be better to sell it than to replace parts time and again.



any suggestions? thanks in advance.

Setting Afterburner to underclock is almost intuitive.

12 bad sectors is exactly 12 too many, with strong odds there will be more in the future. Replace the hard drive. Ugh! What a lot of work... Ben

Thanks for your reply Ben. These are the values I get for my hdd in defraggler.
Wondering if it is OK.Just Curious.Sorry to have not done it earlier, couldn't find time.

12 bad sectors and pool header error was before format.
Do i have to replace hdd to prevent risk from failure, now I cannot afford to have laptop that may not function suddenly when I need it(although it may happen despite all precautions :-))As it is will be opening it up to put thermal paste and new thermal pad



ID Attribute Name RealValue Current Worst Threshold Raw Value
1 Read Error Rate 0 200 199 51 0x000000001EBE
3 Spin-Up Time 1300 ms 154 151 21 0x000000000514
4 Start/Stop Count 2,409 98 98 0 0x000000000969
5 Reallocated
Sectors Count 0 200 200 140 0x000000000000
7 Seek Error Rate 0 200 200 0 0x000000000000
9 Power-On Hours (POH) 198d 0h 94 94 0 0x000000001290
10 Spin Retry Count 0 100 100 0 0x000000000000
11 Recalibration Retries 0 100 100 0 0x000000000000
12 Power Cycle Count 2,402 98 98 0 0x000000000962
191 G-sense Error Rate 45,468 1 1 0 0x00000000B19C
192 Power-off Retract Count 84 200 200 0 0x000000000054
193 Load Cycle Count 53,427 183 183 0 0x00000000D0B3
194 Temperature 49 °C 94 76 0 0x000000000031
196 Reallocation Event Count 0 200 200 0 0x000000000000
197 Current Pending Sector Count 0 200 200 0 0x000000000000
198 Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 100 253 0 0x000000000000
199 UltraDMA CRC Error Count 0 200 200 0 0x000000000000
200 Multi-Zone Error Rate 0 100 253 0 0x000000000000
240 Head Flying Hours 198d 2h 94 94 0 0x000000001292
241 Total LBAs Written 10,807,239,654 200 200 0 0x0000842963E6
242 Total LBAs Read 20,181,539,566 200 200 0 0x0000B2E9DAEE
254 Free Fall Protection 0 200 200 0 0x000000000000

On Thursday, March 27, 2014 1:03:38 AM UTC-4, par k wrote:
Thanks for your reply Ben. These are the values I get for my hdd in defraggler.

Wondering if it is OK.Just Curious.Sorry to have not done it earlier, couldn't find time.



12 bad sectors and pool header error was before format.

Do i have to replace hdd to prevent risk from failure, now I cannot afford to have laptop that may not function suddenly when I need it(although it may happen despite all precautions :-))As it is will be opening it up to put thermal paste and new thermal pad







ID Attribute Name RealValue Current Worst Threshold Raw Value

1 Read Error Rate 0 200 199 51 0x000000001EBE

3 Spin-Up Time 1300 ms 154 151 21 0x000000000514

4 Start/Stop Count 2,409 98 98 0 0x000000000969

5 Reallocated

Sectors Count 0 200 200 140 0x000000000000

7 Seek Error Rate 0 200 200 0 0x000000000000

9 Power-On Hours (POH) 198d 0h 94 94 0 0x000000001290

10 Spin Retry Count 0 100 100 0 0x000000000000

11 Recalibration Retries 0 100 100 0 0x000000000000

12 Power Cycle Count 2,402 98 98 0 0x000000000962

191 G-sense Error Rate 45,468 1 1 0 0x00000000B19C

192 Power-off Retract Count 84 200 200 0 0x000000000054

193 Load Cycle Count 53,427 183 183 0 0x00000000D0B3

194 Temperature 49 °C 94 76 0 0x000000000031

196 Reallocation Event Count 0 200 200 0 0x000000000000

197 Current Pending Sector Count 0 200 200 0 0x000000000000

198 Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 100 253 0 0x000000000000

199 UltraDMA CRC Error Count 0 200 200 0 0x000000000000

200 Multi-Zone Error Rate 0 100 253 0 0x000000000000

240 Head Flying Hours 198d 2h 94 94 0 0x000000001292

241 Total LBAs Written 10,807,239,654 200 200 0 0x0000842963E6

242 Total LBAs Read 20,181,539,566 200 200 0 0x0000B2E9DAEE

254 Free Fall Protection 0 200 200 0 0x000000000000

This whole thing strikes me as a little scary, because the SMART data shows zero sectors for reallocated and pending and uncorrectable and reallocation events, yet you said that there were 12 bad sectors. What software told you there were 12 bad sectors? It concerns me because any diagnostic software that replaces bad sectors and resets the counts to zero is just plain unethical and misleading about the health of the drive. I had long suspected that resetting the counters to zero was possible, and I am sure I could figure out how to do it (just like resetting the page count on an HP laser printer, or the odometer of a car)... Ben Myers

initially had actually run chkdsk /f/r in command prompt that had resulted in 12 bad sectors.
later i gave to a professional who must have misguided me so that he doesn't have to open whole of laptop and he formatted the hdd .The errors vanished no doubt but i feel hdd is still on the edge of dying since it corrupted my wireless drivers. also i had this issue 15 years back when hdd showed me error and professional formatted it and later hdd failed in about a month.but it was a Seagate hdd --that scam in which their hdds failed just 1 month after warranty period

i just trusted the professional this time since i felt hardware may have changed in all these years to self correct it like the windows7 OS- only to find that hdd had corrupted the drivers.

Well the above log is from defraggler, GSmartControl showed me read error....
Time to change hdd i think...
Surprising diff programs giving different results...
command prompt chkdsk /f/r now also gives no errors whatsoever...

On Friday, March 28, 2014 9:00:46 AM UTC-4, par k wrote:
initially had actually run chkdsk /f/r in command prompt that had resulted in 12 bad sectors.

later i gave to a professional who must have misguided me so that he doesn't have to open whole of laptop and he formatted the hdd .The errors vanished no doubt but i feel hdd is still on the edge of dying since it corrupted my wireless drivers. also i had this issue 15 years back when hdd showed me error and professional formatted it and later hdd failed in about a month.but it was a Seagate hdd --that scam in which their hdds failed just 1 month after warranty period



i just trusted the professional this time since i felt hardware may have changed in all these years to self correct it like the windows7 OS- only to find that hdd had corrupted the drivers.



Well the above log is from defraggler, GSmartControl showed me read error....

Time to change hdd i think...

Surprising diff programs giving different results...

command prompt chkdsk /f/r now also gives no errors whatsoever...

One other time I ran diagnostics (Hitachi) which found errors (verified with other software), "corrected" the errors by assigning spare sectors as replacements, and reset the SMART data to show no errors. Gee, I am pretty sure that happened. Was I dreaming??? If that is what happened, then it is a shady and unethical practice.

I have no clue what chkdsk actually does, and I sure don't trust Microsoft to do anything rational with hardware. The only benefit of chkdsk for me is that it has "corrected" hard drive errors by replacing them with spares, and I was then able to clone the drive with software errors and use Windows XP repair to fix up whatever operating system files were damaged. And with XP, after you do a repair, you have to reinstall all the updates again.

I have this installed (a paid version though) utility/monitor: http://download.cnet.com/Hard-Disk-S...-75133299.html

On Friday, March 28, 2014 7:17:39 PM UTC-4, Bob_Villa wrote:
I have this installed (a paid version though) utility/monitor: http://download.cnet.com/Hard-Disk-S...-75133299.html

FWIW, most Dell systems ship with the BIOS SMART reporting option disabled. This means that if a hard drive sector goes south, it is not (AFAIK) recorded in the flash memory in the drive and used for keeping track of the health of the drive. And you do not receive any notification, either, that the hard drive health is getting worse. Then, one day, some critical data gets written to the bad sector, and, oops!, the system is in deep trouble.

This whole business of SMART data on the drive remains a mess. Some drive manufacturers don't bother to keep track of some of the data, as witnessed by outlandish numbers, e.g. billions of hours of drive use. Some manufacturers do not record the information in a consistent format, easily interpreted. The standard says what data should be kept, but does not clearly define a standard format. And, then, Dell shuts off SMART reporting. Not a very SMART standard.