1520 Heat Issues?

About a year ago, I bought two laptops for my family. One for me, with the specs in my sig, and another with similar specs (only with a T7300 and a GeForce 8400M Instead. The latter laptop has been having some heating issues lately. First, whenever I turn on the computer and AVG Virus Scanner works, the laptop simply overheats and shuts down. So I turned it on again, disabled virus scanning, and some start up programs and updated the Bios to A09. Now, the laptop is more stable.

When running Adope Photoshop CS, Winamp, Notebook Review in Firefox and running an AVG Virus scanning at the same time I get about 85 Degrees C. Is this a normal temp? Or has something in the heating system of this laptop crapped out?

Another issue with the laptop is the battery light is flashing orange constantly, both with the adapter plugged in and the adapter not plugged in.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

 

Assuming those are CPU temperatures.

That temperature seems a bit high - but it depends on whether that's with 100% CPU usage or not. That's a decent amount of programs running, and if they're causing 100% CPU usage (check in Task Manager), then 85 C is a hot but acceptable temperature for the 1520. If they aren't using 100% CPU (more like 80% or below), and it's 85 C, then that's hotter than it should be.

You may want to try i8kfangui to monitor more of your temperatures. 85 C at below full load is too hot for the CPU, but you may have other temperatures too high as well. The hard drive temp in particular I'd check - it should be 55 or below. Anti-virus scanning causes lots of hard drive usage and drives up the HDD temperature, so that may be too high as well.

One thing you could try is following Flipfire's Undervolting Guide to reduce CPU voltage and thus decrease temperatures. But if that 85 C is not at full load, then there probably is something not right with the cooling that needs to be repaired.

My 1520 with the T7500 and 8600M GT has reached 91C maximum ever with stock voltages, usually mid-80's max (dependent on ambient temperature and vent interference). With undervolting it's a good 15-20ºC lower relative to what it would be non-undervolted with the same conditions. You may not get quite as much of an undervolt (mine's at 1.0125V), but it'll help. Even so, I need my heating system and fans on at least low to avoid burning up at 100% CPU, so if the heating system is going kaput in that laptop, undervolting alone probably won't be enough for long.