Thermal grease greatly enhances heat transfer between two surfaces. It is generally a white paste and is availible at electronic stores and radio-shack. Just apply a thin layer to the cpu and heatsink (where the two touch) and put the heatsink back on, no need to add a lot as you don't want it sqeezing out everywhere.

Thanks a lot for all the help, I will do that and let you know what happened.

- Murali

I will be getting the grease tomorrow, and will apply it then. In the mean time, I have a question. This grease will help reduce the temperature of the CPU (with better heat dissipation). But I am able to use windows on that machine without any problems. So if the cause as overheating of the CPU, then the machine should have rebooted in Windows as well (Intel CPU). But that does not happen.

So is it possible that Linux uses the CPU more than Windows leading to the CPU overheating? I have even watched DVD's in Windows and I have had no problems. It gets weirder and wierder....

- Murali

Finally the problem was solved. The issue was nothing to do with thermal grease. It was due to a typo, in /etc/hotplug/blacklist. Apparently the module "i810-tco" causes this 30 second reboot. The file /etc/hotplug/blacklist has the list of modules which should not be loaded by the hotplug script. The blacklist file has it as "i810_tco" instead of "i810-tco" (something to do with the way 2.6 and 2.4 kernels name their modules). Once I changed the _ to a -, it was working again.

Now all I need to do to get my machine working is to figure why X wont see my mouse (but that is a question for a different forum).

Thanks for the help guys.

- Murali

Thermal grease is a substance that helps the CPU dissipate more heat to your heatsink. I've never seen any in retailer stores like CompUSA or BestBuy, but you can buy it online for pretty cheap (I think mine was ~$3,$4). Just google for it, I'm sure you can find an online store like NewEgg that can give you a supply. When you apply it, basically its just like squeezing out toothpaste on your CPU. Then take your finger or a cloth or something and rub it around the top of the CPU so you have a nice even coat of grease on it. Then plop down your heat sink unit and you're good to go.


Anyways, I found out that my CPU really WAS overheating (99C, and the max threshold on the specifications is 75C). I think my CPU got damaged because of it, because now and then my computer will unexpectedly freeze. :( Well it doesn't freeze completely actually. The mouse cursor still works, but I can't click the mouse buttons or send any input thru my keyboard. But it actually seems like its getting better though; My uptime is about 27 hours now. :D I found out the reason it was overheating was because when my brother had my computer he fried it somehow and the mobo, psu, and CPU had to be replaced. He got a heatsink with the CPU too (for some reason) and put it on there and its a crappy Intel one. I took it off and put on my old Zalman CNPS7000, but I didn't notice that the heat sink unit had lost most of the thermal grease applied to it and thus there wasn't good heat conductivity between it and my CPU. Oh well, I learned something at least I guess. :o