Windows 10 causing overheating???

This is a little bit long-winded, but I'm hoping you'll bear with me.

A couple of weeks ago, I allowed my server (a 7-year-old HP ProLiant ML115) to automatically upgrade itself from Windows 7 Ultimate to Windows 10 Professional. So far, so good. Or so I thought.

At the beginning of the week, I started having problems with the Windows 10 installation. All of a sudden I couldn't click on the Start button, and had to launch programs by browsing to them on File Explorer and launching them that way. After I had a discussion with one of our IT guys at work, he advised that the upgrade from Windows 7 to 10 has a 50% success/fail rate. If I remember correctly, the exact phrase he used was "train-wreck".

So, downloaded the ISO, burned it to DVD and installed Windows 10 Pro as a clean build.

Now I've got a different problem. For the first time in the 7 years since I bought the server, it's automatically closed itself down because it's overheating. Now, I'm prepared to believe that there may be a hardware issue at the bottom of this, but before I spend time (and probably money) trying to trace the component that's causing the machine to overheat, I want to make sure that there isn't likely to be a software issue (i.e. the Operating System) at fault.

Does anyone know if Windows 10 has been proved to cause overheating in host machines? If so, is it a particular app or piece of software that would be causing it? I did some digging earlier where someone had suggested that perhaps the issue was coming from Windows Defender. The issue I've got with that is that as far as I can see it isn't possible to permanently disable Defender, so if it IS Defender I'd need to be able to hack it out in favour of an alternative security package.

So, bottom line: hardware, software of OS?

CountMike said:

I'm afraid any of those could be reason for overheating.
HW, mostly paste between cooler and CPU. Explanation, during installs computer has to work hard so old paste that's probably already dried out got even worse.
SW and OS, there may be some applications or drivers overworking system, specially during first day or two until everything settles down and could be tied with cause #1.

Yeah, I think my first move is going to be to crack the case and very carefully vacuum inside it - we have three cats and it's not inconceivable that the machine might've sucked in stray cat hair. If that doesn't work I'll investigate the possibility of replacing the cooling paste. I just found it very suspicious that the machine's been running quite happily with the same OS for years, but starts overheating just after I installed Windows 10.

I'll report back once I've checked for loose fur in the works 😀

I have read quite a bit on this topic of laptop overheating and I want to share some experience I have had which just continues to knock my socks off. I think the solution is general in nature, and should apply to any computer and OS. It is fundamentally simple, from a cooling perspective your existing equipment needs to be in tiptop shape as much as possible, It may be that over some years things have so slowly changed that you did not notice cooling deterioration until maybe a challenge like upgrading to Win 10 exposed some problem.

First thing I set out to do was download a free program that monitors the cpu temperature, that is what your cooling fan most seeks to deal with. I found a program called Real Temp GT 3.70. It is several years old but seems to work fine. As I sit here typing my 4 core temps are in the low 60's C. My overheating was obvious as my fan was quite noisy, very fast, and core temps were running mid 90's C! I never got any kind of thermal lockout on it but from what I read that was way too high.

I went through some Win 10 optimization steps that I found in a u-tube video. I think it helped but high temps would still occur.

Being an engineer what made sense to me was to first clean out what I could of my cooling fan. My laptop is Jan 2011, over 5 years old. I flipped the laptop over and removed the screws for the fan and cpu cover, took the cover off, and inspected the fan and how it was attached. The first thing I noticed was a decent layer of grayish dust all over the fan blades, and inside the fan housing. I removed more screws to lift up the fan blade cover plate, as well as the actual fan assembly, since I was not sure how far I needed to go but it all worked out well. I got some q-tips and alcohol and proceeded to scrub out whatever I could from the blades. The q-tips quickly turned black from the mess. For that little fan I went through a dozen q-tips, wiping the surface of the blades as well as digging deep into the valley where the blades met the hub.

I stood the laptop up on its side so I could turn the machine on and observe what I could with the cover off. I have a handheld thermal temp reader and used that to watch the components heatup. I was immediately amazed at how quiet the fan became all of a sudden. No more loud whirring noise. I used the Real Temp program to watch the core temps....they were staying in the low 60's to low 70's C no matter what game programs I ran.

Unbelievable, but simply cleaning my fan in the laptop gained me about 25C drop in temp, from 95C previously.

CountMike said:

You probably don't smoke and have no cats, you should see some stuff I pulled out of laptops. And not only laptops, desktops can collect so much dirt that I started calling them Hoover. Got couple of desktops used in a Swiss hospital, found dust in them too.

My point was, even though you may not see leaves or a bearskin rug or anything obvious that is clogging the system, it is clear to me how sensitive the little fan in there is. Many would have gone out and run garden hoses or cooling tables or blocks of ice for their computer but try simple first. Cooling can be a software problem as well as environmental, so tuning up the TEN to minimize bloatware, automatic this or that, tell Microsoft about this or that, etc etc helps a lot also.

You could start by going to settings>system>notifications&actions and turn off "show me tips about windows". In fact you can turn everything in there off. Monitor your system resources in task manager when you do it for a good laugh

Carsomyr said:

You could start by going to settings>system>notifications&actions and turn off "show me tips about windows". In fact you can turn everything in there off. Monitor your system resources in task manager when you do it for a good laugh

That is one of maybe 100 or so explained in this u-tube clip of 16 min, I found it excellent, he tells you how to eliminate most of the nonsense in many places, especially the Privacy areas, where MS is very invasive. Turn off Cortana, too.

How to Optimize Windows 10 For GAMING Power Users - YouTube

My laptop did the same thing when I first installed 10, it's because it runs a whole lot of background nonsense that regular pc users don't care about or need. Honestly the 1 OS for Desktop/laptop/tablet/phone thing is kind of stupid. My gaming rig is not a phone. Don't treat it like one. :P

I remenber by the Time where Windows XP was launched a lot of people did upgrade their "old" machines. That was not working in the most cases, the PC was so slow, neraly impossible to work.
There a lot of Hardware considerations that needs attention when moving to a "new" OS.
Do your Server meet the requirements? Pay attention that a "good" Hardware for one OS, may turn on "poor" performance for other OS.
There is also problems with Drivers, they must be suitable and work good with new OS.
Well, after 7 Years, at first I would Check the Fan´s and Test the HDD maybe it is near the end-of-life.