[ale] laptop overheats before install completes

[Brian Mathis]

On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Jim Philips <briarpatch.jim at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just trolling for possible solutions: My laptop has an ATI Radeon
> video card. Unless the Catalyst driver is installed, it quickly starts
> to overheat. I messed up my Ubuntu install, so now I want to
> reinstall. But when I try, about 50% of the files get copied to disk
> and then it slows down and finally shuts off due to overheating. This
> wasn't a problem earlier, but I think with each thermal shutdown, the
> laptop gets a little more susceptible to overheating. Once Catalyst is
> installed, everything works fine. But I can only install Catalyst if I
> complete the install of Ubuntu. Any workarounds anybody can think of?


Given your avatar picture, is it possible the fan is full of cat hair
(or other dust)?  I would open it up and give it a good cleaning, and
probably replace the thermal grease while you're at it.  This is more
likely the problem -- heat doesn't really cause cumulative problems
like that, dust does.


❧ Brian Mathis