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Resolved Question

Dell laptop is freezing with very high fan speed

Jan 15, 2015 2:27AM PST

hello friends, my 4 year old Dell inspiron N4010 started freezing from last week. Earlier it used to freeze only for few seconds and especially during internet browsing, but now i can't even browse,it gets stuck for indefinite time, leaving me with only option of shutting it down with power button. For non-browsing work, it works but cpu fan keep running very fast. I am using windows 7 professional,64bit OS.
According to Resource Monitor tool, it shows memory usage as follows:
Available - 410MB
Cached- 400MB
Total- 1908MB
Installed- 2048MB

It has 3GB Ram installed, but what above results mean I coudn't get. Is it a memory issue, or Cpu overheating or anything else. Please help me friends. Thanks in advance.

Discussion is locked

tarun_ has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer
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Clarification Request
Did you try cleaning it with canned air?
Jan 15, 2015 2:31AM PST

If you ask why or how, that's a sign it's time. Many Youtubes on how.
Bob

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No so far I didn't try cleaning it
Jan 15, 2015 10:59PM PST

thanks for the reply,I will clean it and come back to you. But what i was expecting , was RAM issue according to the resource monitor tool's output as according to what i understood from that, there is very less 'available memory' than 'installed memory', also i don't know why it is showing 'installed memory' as 2GB when i know for sure it has 3GB memory installed, that i even cleaned after removing its case suspecting this to be a ram issue,but for no positive result.
One other thing that i would like to add to information given in my earlier question, is that I get a message when i browse internet from windows itself. Occasionally fan starts running very fast with a message ' Internet explorer/Mozilla is using very high memory:1GB we advice to close this application ' and then I have to close that application. This also made me to think that this is issue related to RAM. please share your inputs about above issues, although i will definitely try to clean it and will see if problem get fixed.

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At 4 years and never cleaned.
Jan 15, 2015 11:02PM PST

That's one of the first things to do with high fan speeds.

I've seen folk work very hard on RAM issues before they took care of a basic maintenance item.
Bob

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Cleaned and much improved :)
Jan 17, 2015 11:00PM PST

thanks for your help Bob, I have cleaned it today and its performance is much improved. Also there was much dust deposited inside that i cleaned too. Now the fun runs alright with occasional high speeds,that too is much slower than earlier buzzing speed.
Although soon i open any site in my mozilla, it freezes for a while, and only after few seconds it responds so now I think RAM too, has some issues. Also, when i run window's Resource Monitor tool,it shows following results :

Available-684MB
Cached-653MB
Total-1908MB
Installed-2048MB

p.s - it has 3GB RAM installed,one 2GB memory stick and other 1 GB. thanks .

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The thing is, the world changed.
Jan 18, 2015 2:08AM PST

Back then 3GB machines were accepted as what they were and memory might be a little tight. Today the new browsers have tabs, use a lot more ram and folk might think something is wrong. I don't think that.
Bob

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Thanks
Jan 19, 2015 1:54AM PST

thank you Bob, for all of your support throughout this. I was almost ready to send my laptop at service center. But now, I myself will take care of such things regularly. Thank you again. (y)

Best Answer

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Time to check that RAM. Now that the cleaning is done.
Jan 19, 2015 2:14AM PST

What does the BIOS screen show for RAM?

Thanks for getting that part of the work done. BEFORE we reseat RAM or look at something else, I check the BIOS screen.
Bob

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BIOS screen about RAM
Jan 20, 2015 1:50AM PST

hello Bob, I checked BIOS screen and following are results:
System Memory- 628KB
Extended Memory- 1911MB
Memory Speed- 1066MHz.

As I said earlier, the system actually has 3GB Ram installed. thanks.

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That looks like
Jan 20, 2015 1:56AM PST

Well, did it ever show 3GB in the BIOS? I have found machines that never did and it was some incompatible stick.

Anyhow, now is the time to watch a Youtube on how to remove and reseat the 1GB memory stick.
Bob

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system properties did show 3GB
Jan 20, 2015 12:24PM PST

I never checked about RAM under BIOS but I remember, going to - right click 'my computer'>properties>
then under 'system' menu, it used to used Installed RAM as 3GB. And I have tried removing and reseating RAM even before cleaning part but same issue remained. I will try again and get back to you. thanks.