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Thanks a bunch for all of the great info Nick. I now understand nice
and renice much better though the wikipedia article on it is pretty
understandable for someone like me but you out did that.<br>
I splurged and had Gremlin computers do a basic house cleaning but
no new thermal paste. It was affordable enough and James said that
the fan and port were pretty clogged up and there was dust basically
everywhere. He felt that it would help so we'll see. I can already
tell that the air blowing out is much cooler.<br>
As far as cost effectiveness on an older notebook, and cheap to
boot, I have substantially upgraded it over time with a 4 hour
battery, 4 gigs memory and a bigger hard drive. The day will come
when I need to or the economics are too blatant that I choose to get
a new one and the new models out there are very tempting. I just saw
a Sony on NewEgg for $399 with amazing specs but I don't have that
to spend cavalierly at this time. I'll count the change in my cookie
jar though but I am pretty fanatical about not getting anything new
as long as the old one can still do the job. I hate waste and the
manufacturing process for electronics is brutal on people and the
environment. Damn conscience! Next step is the thermal paste. I need
to look some more for a how-to for this model.<br>
<br>
Thanks again<br>
<br>
Brian <br>
<br>
On 06/01/2012 09:22 AM, Nick Frost wrote:
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cite="mid:1CAD07EF-6449-4152-9ACF-C5DB12062C29@frostitute.com"
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<pre wrap="">On Jun 1, 2012, at 8:26 AM, BrianO'Keefe wrote:
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<pre wrap="">Thanks much Ted. I checked out the man pages and manual and will have to study them to understand Nice. What I don't understand is why I should invoke it?
</pre>
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<pre wrap="">
invoking re-nice is effectively CPU throttling for a given process in this case, limiting the % of CPU and thread consumption through lowering the process priority, I think the idea in this case being presumably to reduce heat by throttling the process eating up CPU cycles (firefox?). Top is another interface to invoke renice for a process. If one runs "top" and hits "r" it then top will prompt "PID to renice?" at which point one enter the PID to renice (listed in left column in top) and then one is prompted for a value. In my case the squeezebox server has a priority of 20, so entering 20 renices it to 39 since the original nice value was zero (becomes 20). Repeating the process and using "0" restores the natural queueing priority for that squeezebox process..
With renice, positive numbers decrement a process priority, negative numbers increase it…so positive integers for slowing someone thing down, negative for allocating higher resource priority.
It sounds like the Toshiba L305-S5917, similar to the The HP dv2000 has the problem of degrading CPU thermal paste causing overheating. As mentioned by Brian previously Arctic Silver has the best thermal dissipation of any paste I've used.
I elected not to repair the dv2000 that was brought to me for the third time (locking up, graphics issues) because it (GPU) showed signs of component stress due to overheating. The disassembly process can be time consuming and while I'd not discourage one from trying it, if the laptop is > 2 years old one can get a new Asus Core i3 for $650 from Newegg.
I say this because I did a complete teardown and rebuild of a Xerox Phaser 8200N printer some time ago and while the repair was successful the printer lasted about 6 months before breaking again and so I would have been better served in terms of time and money purchasing a new printer. I've repaired enough hardware in 20 years that is was less educational and more a waste of time due to misplaced curiosity of my part (I have a thing for thermal wax printers). Nevertheless, laptop repair is usually if not always a learning experience and so if one is strongly motivated to economize and tinker then I'd endorse the suggestion to go ahead with the thermal paste replacement and hope the overheating goes away and laptop continues to provide reliable operation.
Good luck,
-Nick
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Nicholas S. Frost
7 Avenida Vista Grande #325
Santa Fe, NM 87508
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:nickf@frostitute.com">nickf@frostitute.com</a>
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