please forgive me for what i am sure will be a long post.

ever since i started using slack 10.1 on my compaq presario 1201t, it seems like my cooling fan never shuts off. this is especially true whenever i'm running something that uses graphics like my media player or gba emulator. it also happens when i have several programs running at once (browser, gaim, gimp, irc...).

the fan always seems to be running at top speed and, if it stays on for longer than...15 to 20 minutes, the laptop just shuts off without any warning. also the bottom of it is sometimes physically hot.

i thought blowing the dust off of my motherboard might help, but it still keeps happening. it's not hot anymore when i touch it, but the cooling fan keeps on going and it still keeps shutting down on me.

also, i always seem to have problems with anything heavy on graphics: avi files, flash toons, games, and even some screen savers. they all seem to run much much slower than they did when i was running windows. is there a problem with my operating system versus my graphics card? is there anything that i can do about that?

i admit that i don't completely have this operating system figured out. i've been running around the interweb for quite some time trying to fix all of these issues and a few more. i'm actually beginning to consider going back to win2000 as a last resort...

it's not that i don't like linux, but it just seems that it's not quite compatable with my laptop. i tried checking at linux-laptop.net, but i didn't see any known issues there. i realize that my computer's a little bit dated, so i didn't expect to find much info on it.

my answer might be try switching to slack 10.2, or fedora core, or some other linux distro, but i don't currently have access to a cd burner. or is an older distro a better idear?

i dunno...i guess i've run out of patience with this thing. please help.

pretty please?

I'm not familiar with your exact model, but do make sure frequency scaling, ACPI and so on is working properly. If the fan is on all the time it could suggest that it is runnning at full speed even when it's not needed and thus overheating.


Håkan

Check if you have enabled DRI in /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Maybee on your system some "undercover process" is being done..
If you use KDE, look what System Monitor tells you - Right click on Panel - Add - Applet - System Monitor. Is your procesor 100% of usage??? Than try to wright in your shell (Terminal or Console) "top" and look what there is being sad... You can kill a "undercover program" pressing "k" key, and than number "9"... OR, you can run a program (Gnome application) "System Monitor" and there you can in even better way see what°s up...

the system monitor applet shows cpu: 100% idle and mem 85 MB 26% free. but when i play a movie or try to install something, the bar jumps all the way up and stays there. it's gotten really annoying lately because i've been trying to install wine and my laptop shuts down halfway through.

in fact, even the simplest tasks seem to make my cpu usage go up about halfway.

i searched through /etc/X11/xorg.conf, but didn't find any mention of DRI. and i'm afraid i'm not familiar with frequency scaling or ACPI. i'm...um...googling them as i type this.

i'm going to reboot as soon as i'm done posting this. see if anything changes...

nope, still the same. but i did notice that it doesn't take very long for my memory to drop below 30%.

i've been doing some reading around and somewhere suggested that i might need to recompile my kernel. in fact, it seems to me like this is the first thing that a lot of users do after they first install slack.

think that might be my answer? maybe the way my kernel is set up now just isn't working for my laptop? i ask that with a bit of apprehension because the, last time i messed with my kernel, i had to reinstall everything. for some reason my laptop couldn't find any of my drives...

I°ve used Slack 10.1, and kernel that comes with it (2.6.X) was unusable with my laptop.

Yes with Slack i had to recompile the kernel and add in "power managment option" specifically the "ACPI" support.
i would recommend reading
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=127095 if you have the 2.6 kernel or read
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=49035 for a 2.4 kernel

there were a couple more tweeks i had to do to get things working 100% but thats going to be more system specific. the guide relating to you kernel should have a lot of the info you need further on in the post and in configuring your kernel there is help info relating to specific options.

good luck