After installing Windows 7 Pro on my sister’s Dell D820, it started randomly restarting. The fans would power up to full speed for a few seconds, the screen would flash and then the whole thing would just power off, without restarting. This was obviously a heat problem, so I downloaded the great tool (which needs a better name) i8kfanGUI, which allowed me to monitor the temperatures of the CPU and the GPU. The GPU was obviously the problem, it was idling at 70°C, while the CPU seemed ok, idling at around 45°C. When I forced the fans to full power, the GPU temp didn’t come down.
Having identified the problem, I searched the internet for a bit, and found the excellent Dell Lattitude D820 Service Manual for the D820. This document is excellent, and the fact that Dell make these would make me buy a Dell in future, over other manufacturers, as this kind of information is priceless once the machine is out of warranty.
Culprit!
At this stage, I stripped down just enough to see the GPU and cooling array, which only required taking off the keyboard to have a peek. I shone a light from one side of the GPU, and could see the light shining through, there was a gap between the heatsink and the chip! The motherboard had been replaced due to faulty sound a few months ago, and clearly the engineer didn’t replace the heatsink correctly. The problem had only become apparent now, with Windows 7’s higher graphics usage.
Solved!
I went out and bought some Thermal Grease, and set about stripping down the laptop. Getting to the cooling array involves completely dismantling the computer, and I did get a fair amount of James May style satisfaction from having the entire thing laid out, screw by screw on the table in front of me. Once I got the cooling array out, the problem was even more apparent. Both of the other chips under it had (different!) grease applied, and the plate for the GPU was bare. I applied a liberal amount of grease and screwed it back up. Opening i8kfanGUI again showed the GPU idling at about 50°C, and responding to the fan – a great improvement!
Ormeo is a web-wide comments system. It can be installed on a single site so that anyone can comment, or it can be installed on your computer, allowing you to comment on anything on the web.
Ormeo started off as an idea, then grew into an experiment in JQuery, and finished off as a fully functional web-app, complete with Firefox Extension. Ormeo is the system used on this site for comments, instead of wordpress’s own system. This allows visitors to this site to use their Ormeo login for every site they visit!
Click the Ormeo tab (on the lower right hand side of the page) to comment now!
This site was made for the new Friends of Guildford Lido (FOGL) group, so that they can easily contact members, provide news about the Lido, and gather support from new visitors to the site. Members of FOGL have access to special content, and can discuss articles with other members on the site.
It uses Wordpress, with a custom theme, and plugins to support twitter and facebook integration and event planning, and has a custom hand-made user system.
I made this site while trying to revise for exams. People can create consequences to add to the pool, generate their own and vote on other people’s, as well as see the most popular consequences.
This project was done entirely by hand in PHP, with JQuery for the Javascript/AJAX.
Hi! I have moved everything over to a new Wordpress site, for ease of updating, and SEO. I’ll be keeping track of projects I’m working on on here, as well as any new sites or ideas.
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