Overheating
 

In Windows 7, (when I was running it) I would play triple A games such as Star Wars the force unleashed, The Elder Scrolls Skyrim, etc etc, and never once did my GPU overheat. But when I installed Ubuntu 11.10, after prolonged use, without even playing a single game, my screen would go black, nothing would work (as far as input), and it would appear frozen, as if it was overheating. I hear it's the GPU overheating, but if it isn't, what could it be? And any way it can be prevented?

Is the bottom of the laptop hot to touch? My guess would be the cpu rather than the gpu, it is overheating because the kernel module to increase and decrease the cpus frequency isn't loaded or the cpu frequency governor isn't set to ondemande.

What cpu have to got? What is the output of lsmod?

It is hot to the touch. It's a Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU P8700 @ 2.53GHz × 2. And you lost me after that haha :(

run the command "lsmod" in terminal, you may need to run it with sudo..as in "sudo lsmod". You should get an output similar to this: (copy and paste and post that here.)

run the command "lsmod" in terminal, you may need to run it with sudo..as in "sudo lsmod". You should get an output similar to the code below. (copy and paste and post that here.)
Also, is your fan running in the machine? You may consider turning it to always on in bios to keep the computer cooler.

Yes, the fan is running.

EDIT: So what data is being displayed here?

Ok.. Good, now could you run the following and paste the output?

ls /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/cpufreq/

(you may have to install cpufrequtils package: ) cpufreq-info

Edit: Sorry dident see your last part, the data that is displayed is what modules the kernel currently has loaded. If you look and see for example mine has "acpi_cpufreq" (your intel should be using this or the speedstep-centrino module as far a I know), our suspicion is that either your freq settings are incorrect or...the modules are never loaded. If these modules are never loaded your kernel cannot communicate with the CPU to set frequencies "on demand"(meaning it stays at low speeds and will be sped up when the system needs it.) right now it seems that the cpu is set full blast all the time causing the computer to get very hot. In a windows comparison you could think of modules being the "Drivers" for Linux.

http://wiki.stocksy.co.uk/wiki/Think_Green
I tried it & can't get ondemand loaded

is it because there is no support for doing so with your CPU? or is just not working when your loading it into the configuration files?

you could try to use cpufreq to force it and see if that works...

cpufreq-set -r -g ondemand

if all else fails you could create a script that manually sets the speed for you, not sure how easily that could be done however.

Ihave celeron (M) 1.6

I see, all options are supported, cpu-freq see's the processor meaning you loaded the right modules. I'm assuming you loaded the cpufreq_ondemand module as well.

A more direct approach:
check and see if that changes it under scaling_gov..
(Sets on the single processor you have , and also sets the highest and lowest paramaters to it..)

If that fails, change it directly using this command:
you can watch and see if the frequency changes with this command as well..

LOL, sorry I was a bit terse ;) As D-P has stated lsmod lists the modules currently within the kernel. The CPU needs to dynamically control its frequency to keep the temperature down but it can't do this unless the module/driver in running within the kernel. From your output of lsmod it doesn't look like the CPU driver is loaded in the kernel, thus you need to load it by doing, as root,

modprobe acpi_cpufreq

Also, you could try modprobe fan, for me that gets the fan to go on and off to keep the laptop quiet. Once the CPU module is loaded you need to make sure the governor, the code which decides how the CPU frequency will change, is set to ondemand. The simplest way to do this is in a terminal enter

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor

If it says ondemand then everything should be fine.You can add an applet to your desktop to show the current CPU frequency, on gnome just right click and go Add to panel, then add the CPU frequency monitor. Keep an eye on the temperature of your laptop as excessive heat can really mess them up.

no changes still set for performance

Pretty much expected that.
try and see setting it to another setting will work..(ie conservative)
If that works and is in scaling_gov then we can assume that it is only ondemand that has the issue. If it doesn't, you could try another driver, or see if a gui program is setting it (see below)

You might want to check through dmesg and see if you see something that looks like this:
if you do find that..I found a fix but im not sure if it works or not. http://www.2realities.com/howtos/lin...quency_scaling

The last idea I have is maybe there is a gui program that is setting these parameters. I would look through all settings in your Desktop Manager that deal with the processor or power saving settings...

In either case, you could try two things..
1. Try another driver...
Remove the current p4_clockmod from your modules..
and load the acpi_cpufreq driver..
This might fix your problem, p4-clockmod is known to have issues with ondemand..

2. Run user-land CPU control...
if you look at http://wiki.debian.org/HowTo/CpuFrequencyScaling, near the bottom you should see "The userland-based governors (cpufreqd, cpudyn, powersaved, powernowd ...) are usually not needed any more." You could try to use one of those to control the freq.