10 replies to this topic

[fivealive]

i ask because iv been leaving my laptop on my desk in my bedroom where my air conditioner is and the room can get really cold, and iv noticed that the computers boot up seems slower and odd at times

like iv typed my password in to login and the aero system (where the task bar is black) will be white for a few seconds to a few minutes before it changes over to black)


so im just curious if i should move the laptop some where else or turn the A/C down.


thanks in advance for your help

fivealive

[David H. Lipman]

No problem if the computer is acclimated or left on.

Where cold can become a problem is where the machine is cold and brought into a warm room.
If the computer uses a spindle drive then the tolerances are much tighter, due to cold contraction of metal, and can cause hard disk failure or decrease it's lifespan.
The other issue is moisture condensation.

So the rule of thumb is really simple. Acclimate a system to its environment before turning it on.

[fivealive]

Ah alright welli don't leave it on I turn it off when I'm done with it

[David H. Lipman]

All electronics do not like temperature extremes or dramatic transitioning from one to another.

Room A/C is not that cold. It is not like leaving a notebook in a car overnight where the temperature outside was 20 Deg F.

Before turning on a system make sure it has been in that environment for a while before turning the system on.

[fivealive]

Ah alright ill keep that in mind. And the laptop doesn't leave my room at all so its always in the a/c room.

[David H. Lipman]

There 'ya go. No problem.

[CWB]

"noticed that the computers boot up seems slower and odd at times ..."
"typed my password in to login and the aero system (where the task bar is black) will be white for a few seconds to a few minutes before it changes over to black" .

as david indicated , one of the biggest banes of/to electronic gear is condensation caused by high humidity + cool temps of the equipment .
(think working with a laptop in a walk-in freezer and then going back out into room temp and high humidity)

some lcd displays will "slow down" in response time when they get cold ... this is the nature of the chemistry behind the technology and not an "electronic" problem in and of itself .
the term "ghosting" or "aliasing" is often used to describe this effect .
some displays simply "stop working" (aka : responding) when cooled below a certain temperature .
however , this effect is not associated with : "few seconds to a few minutes before it changes over" ...
this symptom would indicate a problem elsewhere with the system software/resource wise ...

you might want to clean things out , turn off superfluous programs/options that run in the background and such ... lean things up as much as possible .
you did not mention the specs of the machine .
older machines lack the "horsepower" to run the more involved (he says euphemistically) anti-mal/scum/virus and other programs of today .
also , and not to be a fatalist , some infections can run and not be "up front" ... this can cause a machine to be slow .

[fivealive]

well it hasnt happened again so i think i just typed the password in to fast and push enter (by that i mean i didnt let it finish its boot process before logging in )

and the computer is extremely fast its got :

windows 7 home premium

for processor it has : intel core i7-2670qm @ 2.20ghz

with 8gb of installed ram

only software that boots up with the machine is mbam pro , MSE , the sound drivers the alienware command center.

and computer generally only takes 2 minutes to boot up.

as i said it was just the aero thing.

all scans come up clean

and besides that one time of the aero look doing that iv not had an issue. i just found it odd that it did that but when i checked event viewer it turns out that the process that controls aero wasnt one of the first things to turn on that time something else beat it to the punch so to speak.

[CWB]

with the specs of the lapatop two minutes seems a bit on the long side .

i just replaced the HDD and installed W7/32 on a friend's laptop ...
2.2GHz pentium dual core w/3gigs ram .
it loads MSE and a couple of other items at boot-up (along with the normal stuff) ... takes about 20 seconds .

[David H. Lipman]

Time is not so much a factor of the hardware but of the software.

A 64bit OS is slower than a 32bit OS. You are comparing apples and oranges.

[fivealive]

2 minutes is an estimate iv never actually timed it chances are I'm wrong on the time. When I get home ill turn it on and time itAlso of note is the alienware command center is on a delayed start up and I don't count the boot as finished till its loaded