G73JH CPU at 100C without any load - help!

Hi,
My G73JH just started acting up as I was playing Starcraft 2. The game was really slow and I was running HWiNFO32 to monitor stuff. At one point the game became unplayable, and I shut it down, only to find my processor at 100 degrees C. All the cores also reported a clock speed of 400MHz. I immediately shut down, waited a few minutes to reboot and when I did, the temperature was still 100C.

I can feel that the keyboard is really hot as I am typing this. I shut down another time and waited a good 15 mins and now it's at 80C steady while I'm just on this one firefox tab.

Please, any help, thoughts or insight would be appreciated!

 

Have you cleaned out your vents recently?

 

First suggestion:

log into windows.

Right click the windows taskbar, select "Start Task Manager"

Select the second tab in the task manager window "Processes"

Go through the list and see if you can find a process that is monopolizing your CPU [system idle process doesn't count]

You'll be able to tell by the third column in that window, titled "CPU"

Write down the name of the process if you find one, then right click on it and select "end process" You may or may not get a warning, but continue and close that process [it won't hurt anything]

See if temps return to normal.

 

CrappyAlloy: No, but I think they are pretty clean. The problem also appeared very suddenly. I was playing the same game yesterday with no problems and about 60C.

mindinversion: Nothing using any noticable amount of cpu power. Total cpu usage ranges from 1-5%

Thanks for the replies though!

 

is the gpu vent runing like it should?
if you got high temperature it should make noise a lot

 

Yea, if the CPU is essentially idling, my next guess would be a hardware/cooling issue.

How was it running before this started happening? Was it an all of a sudden huge jump in temps, or have your temps been getting higher for awhile?

 

did you messed with GPU drivers latelly
getting the wrong (desktop not mobility) driver can cause temperature rising

 

The vents in the back are running. More noisy than usually, but not at max i think. The GPU is not very hot at all, it's only the CPU.

This is a new problem, as I said, yesterday I ran the same program with a temp of about 60C.

I have not changed GPU drivers since mid january.

 

oo god i am blind i thought your gpu is overheating
hmmm i really don't have ideas at the moment
if noting is torturing your CPU and if it is spining like it should then it is not a hardware issue
monitor the frequency and spining of the cooler ...

 

the only other thing I can think of to isolate is to restart in safe mode [F8 during boot IIRC] and see if your temps are still through the roof. If they are, my guess would be hardware issue [possibly between CPU and heat sink if the fan is alright] If the temps in safe mode are more normalized, that would point at some kind of software/driver issue somewhere.

 

monitor !
maybe the CPU fan is stoping spinning so the best way to find out is monitor

 

Hm. It seems better but I haven't really done anything.

I tried booting into safemode and checking, but when in safemode I wasn't able to run HWiNFO32 to actually check the temp, so I ended up just shutting down again. Then I booted into Ubuntu (dualboot) to check the temp from there (figured that if it was caused by software/drivers this would be the same as safemode windows) but I am an Ubuntu noobie, so I was unable to.
When I booted back into windows, and now everything seems to be back to normal. I'm still very confused and quite worried. Will post back if I get more trouble! Thanks for your help.

 

LOL It's your power settings. Your CPU will stay at 100%, even if usage is at 1-5%. Just change it from high performance to balanced.

 

That's very true, but if OP is idling at 1-5% CPU usage, it shouldn't reach 100C even if the CPU is running at a non-throttled speed. I'd be more inclined to say the fan is at fault here since OP mentioned that even at 100C the fan was not running at full speed.