I have a Toshiba Tecra Laptop with a 1.5 Ghz Pentium M CPU and it posts correctly and starts windows and about 5 minutes into operation the system will lock up but not completely. You can hit CTRL + ALT + DELETE and get into the task manager and check out everything, but strangely the CPU utilization is at 0% across the board for all running processes ( even when sorted ). Makes no sense that the system can be at 0% and the mouse pointer was still active. But the windows OS is pretty much worthless at this point, you cant open or close anything, but task manager is able to open.
I am guessing that the 0% is a false indication of actual CPU for the fact that the CPUs fan is roaring hot with heat out the side where the cpu vent is. This vent by the way is not obstructed and blades on the heatsink are clear of lint etc.
I initially thought it was a Windows corruption issue, so I popped in a Knoppix Live Linux bootable CD and started with that and it loaded Knoppix fine and about 5 minutes later Knoppix was locking up and the CPU was roaring hot with fan at full speed.
Nothing changed with this laptop, just one day it started doing this and I am not sure as to why. How could a CPU overheat with the fan full speed roaring out heat??? If the CPU was shot, shouldnt it fail to run earlier on than to cook even with the fan full speed and air rushing out of the side of the computer as hot as a hair dryer???
Thanks!
