new here! amd single core notebook temps giving me issues

CoreTemp-User214 · Post by **CoreTemp-User214** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 5:37 am

After doing some research as to why my laptop likes to restart out of nowhere, I decided that it must be overheating..

Background info

Gateway Laptop - MX6446 - about 2.5 years old
CPU - MK-36 (single core 2.0gHz)
Ram - 2GB (upgraded)
HDD - 100GB 7200rpm (upgraded)
GPU - ATI Radeon Xpress 1150 (integrated) shared 128 mb
OS - XP Pro 32bit SP3

Well, I recently reformatted to see if any of my programs/settings had any part in the notebook restarting.. looks like it did not. After I did a clean ntfs format plus windows install, I keep getting the random restarts.

More info

-I have already disabled "auto restart" in the performance tab of my computer.
-Already downloaded the latest chipset, graphic, cpu, etc drivers
(What really pisses me off is that I can not find an updated bios! Gateway sucks and does not list any bios download for Win XP.. The computer came with XP which is really bizarre) it's vista ready though ......
-I made sure that the cpu is still in throttled mode so that it's not maxed out all the time.. Thought this would help, but it just gave me a random reboot not too long ago

According to Core Temp, I am idling around 61. When I do certain tasks like streaming video playback, my cpu hits at least 70. I've even seen it get very close to 80. This definitely can not be good. I already gave my internals a nice compressed air treatment, but it didn't seem to do much since I hit around 72 with video playback

About the bios.. Phoenix Technologies LTD.. would be the correct bios manufacturer. When I use their "biosagentplus" app to do a free scan, it notes that my bios is out of date and will supply me with up to date drivers for an annual fee of like 40 dollars... I think this is ridiculous. Is this the only way to go?

Thanks in advance

Post by **imposter** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 8:15 pm

I think this is your bios

http://support.gateway.com/support/driv ... =229154754

But im not sure.

Ill let you confirm that.

Its most likely not a bios update issue. Have you tried, running prime95 ? Run prime95 for a bit while monitoring the temperatures. Its most likely over heating as you mention. I would look on ebay on the internet for a fan replacement.

also dont buy bios update. thats most likely a fake or spam.

CoreTemp-User214 · Post by **CoreTemp-User214** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 8:24 pm

thanks for the reply imposter

i don't think a bios for vista would work for xp ????

http://www.phoenix.com/en/Home/default.htm is my OEM bios brand

when I browse their site for updates, it redirects me to http://www.driveragent.com/?PHPSESSID=d ... 5vqq09s0d4

definitely does not seem like a scam to me since it's "verisign" ect.

driversgent - "Touchstone Software is now owned by Phoenix Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: PTEC)."

CoreTemp-User214 · Post by **CoreTemp-User214** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 10:34 pm

so i used p95 for a few tests while monitoring core temp and i've been hitting high 60's and sometimes 70's

my computer didn't shut off once...

Post by **The Coolest** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 11:09 pm

Each company creates their own BIOS for their hardware, Phoenix doesn't really have much to do with anything.
It seems as the latest BIOS for your laptop is dated to be 27th April 2007. What is the date of the BIOS you have right now?
Also BIOS and OS aren't related. There is no "Windows XP BIOS" or "Vista BIOS", a BIOS is what makes the computer do the initial boot process until the OS takes over.

Random resets can occur due to many reasons, primarily overheating or unstable CPU, memory issues, power supply problems - but this shouldn't be an issue on a laptop unless the motherboard is going bad.

As imposter said, my suggestion would be to get the latest Prime95, you can get it here:
http://www.mersenne.org/ftp_root/gimps/p95v259.zip
Run it for a few hours by going to Options --> Torture test and selecting "Small FFTs".
If Prime95 doesn't fail (stop with an error) after several hours and you get no reboots then download memtest86+, burn it to CD and boot the computer off of it and let it make a few passes testing your RAM (it can take a couple of hours for several passes).
You can get memtest86+ here:
http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

*Moved to the appropriate section

CoreTemp-User214 · Post by **CoreTemp-User214** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 5:10 am

Thanks for the post

After reading your post I decided to go for the updated 4/27/07 (68.05) BIOS update from gateway.

My normal BIOS has a date of 9/4/06 (84.02)

Well, long story short, the 4/27 BIOS failed on me and did not process. So I went with the other version Gateway had up on the drivers page for my computer 3/16/07 (84.06). WinPhlash made a copy of 84.02 and "successfully" installed/flashed 84.06. Upon reboot, the inevitable happened. Normal Gateway boot logo did not load, BIOS did not load, and I did not even receive a POST.. All I had was a running hard drive with a black screen. Some flashing LED's. No OS. No Activity.

So this is when I started freaking out and searched the internets on the sister's PC. It took me about 3 hours to find a solution. I basically ended up tearing aprt my keyboard to try and reset the CMOS battery. No luck with that.. so simply I read that I could try removing my RAM and rebooting. Did that, no hope. THEN I only used one DIMM and the baby booted right up! Of course when it tried to boot XP it failed. It started to load but it never finished. I gave me weird flashing colors. Sooo at this point I was happy at the least that I could boot. I needed to somehow reflash my original BIOS.

I had the idea of booting from my Hiren's BootCD 9.8 (http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd)
The CD gave me the option of MINI XP, so I tried that. It's version of XP loaded! and allowed me to browse my C drive! I found my backup bios (bios.bak) luckily. Somehow I also read on the internets about renaming the .bak file to a .rom and then reflashing! I gave it a try and bullseye!
My system loaded up to it's mint condition (minus the missing gig of RAM which I easily swapped back in with no issues).

I really don't know why I had such and issue with the BIOS updates for my computer. I feel pretty lucky that I found a fix on recovery.

Anyways, as I stated before I did run P95 for a few different tests and came up with poor results. (High 60's to High 70's)

The other day I tested my memory with memtest86 for about an hour. 0 Errors.

Thanks for the input The Coolest.. I wish the "vista" BIOS upgrades worked for me.. Are you sure BIOS and OS aren't related?

About fan replacements, should I use the part number I find on Gateway to shop fan setups?

CoreTemp-User228 · Post by **CoreTemp-User228** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 5:54 pm

so i used p95 for a few tests while monitoring core temp and i've been hitting high 60's and sometimes 70's

CoreTemp-User288 · Post by **CoreTemp-User288** » Sun Jun 28, 2009 6:52 pm

Thanks for the post

After reading your post I decided to go for the updated 4/27/07 (68.05) BIOS update from gateway.