I currently have an Aspire 5680 laptop. It's pretty fast, but with time it has slowed down. I notice a change in the computer's speed when the fan speeds up. As the fan reaches the fastest speed the system also speeds up for a few seconds, but then slows down. Does anyone know what causes it? Thanks, SFI
generate system health report as it might offer some clues http://www.petri.co.il/vista-system-health-report.htm
Dirt. It is likely the interior is full of heat trapping dust and dirt. This causes heat to build up which causes the fan to speed up in an attempt to compensate. But if too much dust is clogging heat sinks and vents, heat continues to remain high, so the CPU toggles down in speed to keep from frying.
Yup...laptops, and dust bunny blankets blocking the air intake on the bottom or side or back of the laptop chassis. A common problem with laptops, especially people who use their laptops in bed propped up on their thighs on top of a puffy blanket. Blocked air flow means the temperature controlled fan works harder and can throttle things down. Also, hard drives on laptops take more of a beating than desktop counterparts. Replacing the hard drive on a laptop is one way to revive performance, they're quite cheap, and there are "cloning" kits around which allow you to copy your current image over to the new drive so you don't lose a thing. Clone old drive to new drive, remove old drive, replace with new drive...enjoy reclaimed performance and longer life expectancy of your laptop. Recoop some of your money..take old hard drive...pickup a cheap external USB drive enclosure for it..and utilize it as a backup drive.
That's exactly why I'm pushing the movement to break people's and maker's habits of calling them "lap"tops, and call them notebooks instead. They should never sit on your lap, carpet, bedding or anything that can suffocate, block or restrict air flow. Use a tray, or better yet, a Notebook Cooling Pad w/ext. power supply.
