C&C overheats my laptop

[cn2mc]

I play TD on a Sony Vaio, Intel core i3 @ 2.13 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 64-bit windows 7 OS. Whenever I play, particularly on CnCNet, the laptop heats up very quickly and the fan starts spinning like the thing is gonna take off. The overheating sometimes results in system crashes, no error messages, no nothing - I either get an automatic cold restart or a complete lockdown, which I can only fix with a cold restart. Why would C&C overheat my laptop? Is it DDraw (I run the game in a window because of widescreen weirdenss)? Is it fixable?

 

EDIT: Forgot the graphics card - ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470.

[Myg]

Try running it on "stamina" if you have that button.

 

Otherwise I would suggest cleaning out the heatsink and replacing the contact surface pads with high quality conductant.

 

 

[cn2mc]

Well, my model (PCG-71212M) doesn't have a speed/stamina button, so I guess I'll have to do some cleaning this evening and see how it goes. Thanks.

[Nyerguds]

yeeah... blowing some compressed air through the fan should do the job.

[cn2mc]

OK. It appears that the crashes I experience are NOT due to overheating. I cleaned the fan and the computer doesn't heat up nearly as much, but they still occur sometimes. So something else is causing them. I already described the crashes and my specs. The only other thing I can add is that they seem to happen the most when I give multiple commands to different units in a short span of time. Like selling many buildings quickly or heavily microing a lot of infantry. So, what could the reason be?

 

BTW, I also checked task manager to see how much of the CPU resources TD uses. It's 25%.

[Nyerguds]

There is literally no way a sudden computer restart can be caused by the game itself. On crashes where your game seems to freeze without error message, it is possible you might get the error message by pressing alt-tab or ctrl-esc.

 

BTW, I also checked task manager to see how much of the CPU resources TD uses. It's 25%.

That just means you got a quad core. Like many DOS-era games, C&C takes the full CPU power of the core it runs on.

[cn2mc]

There is literally no way a sudden computer restart can be caused by the game itself. On crashes where your game seems to freeze without error message, it is possible you might get the error message by pressing alt-tab or ctrl-esc.

 

I can't, the computer becomes completely unresponsive: black/grey screen + a looped soundbit of what was currently going on with the sound going ble-e-e-ep. I've yet to see such a crash occur while not playing C&C. But if it does, I would appear to have a serious problem.

 

That just means you got a quad core. Like many DOS-era games, C&C takes the full CPU power of the core it runs on.

 

Yeah, that's what I figured too. Thanks.

[Nyerguds]

Hm. Could you test if other games which have the same full core usage behaviour (like, RA1) cause the same thing?

[cn2mc]

Never mind all I've said. I DID experience such a crash outside of the game (only once though), so I'll try with a Windows reinstall. Although I have to say, switching from windowed mode to fullscreen drastically reduced crashes. Actually, I haven't experienced this particular crash ingame since I switched to fullscreen, so, as I earlier suspected, playing in windowed mode probably has some serious negative effects on my system. Thanks for all the feedback, and I'll test RA when I have the time. DTA seems to run just fine with fog of war off (though I'm not sure if TS uses full CPU power).

[pichorra]

Try to set the singlecpu=true in ddraw. That will probably make the game troubleless to your processor.

 

Is the sony vaio case in aluminium? i've heard that some laptops are comming with plastic case, and those ones do not deal well with heating.

[Matt]

I wonder why this happens. Did you forgot a frame limiter in your Direct-Draw Hacks? Performance wise those classics were optimized for 60 Mhz PCs.

[cn2mc]

Try to set the singlecpu=true in ddraw.

 

This. Last evening I played for a full three or four hours in windowed mode with all kinds of crap running in the background and the fan didn't even speed up. Almost no heat whatsoever and no crashes at all. Thanks a lot.