Suddenly hot toshiba laptop, fan running over time

[flipper]

right out of nowhere, my fan is running almost constantly. this is on a toshiba satellite a45-s120 laptop. actually, using power management, i turned "cooling method" down to its lowest setting. but the fan still comes on for about 15 seconds every 15 seconds or so.

speedfan shows:
local temp: 54c
remote temp: 65c
hard drive: 35c

the everest sensor check comes back similarly:
motherboard: 54
cpu: 64
hard drive: 35

i don't know exactly why this has suddenly happened but it has. this morning, i removed the heatsink et al and blew out all the dust. didn't use any paste putting the sink back, thinking the old stuff would be good enuf.

what else can i do? btw / i am using the laptop as a desktop repacement.

btw / this laptop does *no* heavy lifting. it's used for surfing the net and word processing, nothing more at all ever

 

[flipper]

anyone? anyone?

 

[altheman]

this morning, i removed the heatsink et al and blew out all the dust. didn't use any paste putting the sink back, thinking the old stuff would be good enuf.

im sure thats your problem, you should never use a cpu without thermal paste, especially modern day ones.

the old stuff will not be enough, becasue there will be air between the heatsink and the thermal paste, which is not good. clean of the old thermal paste using some spirit (paint brush cleaning stuff) and a lint free cloth, and put a new layer on.

 

[flipper]

i got some grease from radio shack, put a rice-grain-sized bit where the old stuff used to be, and screwed 'er down.

it didn't lessen the temps at all. what i've done now is gone into power management and put "cooling method" on high performance. now both local temp and remote temp (ie cpu) are at 35 degrees c. great ... except the fan is now running constantly, without ever stopping. is that okay do you think? have any other thoughts or suggestions?

and btw / thanks for weighing in!