High temperatures in PC's

[nigelf1234]

My PC has a tendency to overheat, especially of course if its a hot day. I know I really need a more poweful cooler. The BIOS reports the CPU temperature when I reboot, but is there any way to get at this from XP? Perhaps there is a program i can download. It would be very useful if I could track this, so I can see straight away if I'm going to have a problem.

[qapmoc]

Plenty of stuff around for this, try http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Best/cpu-mo nitor-xp.html

[qapmoc]

Ummm... maybe you should try cleaning all the dust etc. off of the CPU cooling fan and heatsink to make sure that at least it has a chance to work correctly.

[Space]

what makes you say it overheats? what happens?

[peanut]

First of all, you need to find the cause of the problem. Is your cpu fan running? or as previously stated, is it clogged with dust? is your heatsink properly mounted with thermal paste between the cpu and the heatsink? After you find and fix the cause, then look for a program to monitor the temperature. Try going to the motherboard manufacturer website and look for utilities to monitor cpu temp. You may also try going to bios and check to see if there is an option to give a warning for cpu temp. By the way did you get your recycle bin back?

[nigelf1234]

Thanks for all the suggestions. It looks like its OK now with a new much bigger heatsink and fan and good contact between the CPU and cooler. The BIOS shows around 50 deg C, whereas before it was showing 75-76 deg C. Would still like to monitor temperature and VIA don't seems to do anything that I can see.
Recycle Bin? Still missing I'm afraid. Each time I try and alter the registry entry, it only keeps it until I reboot and there is no sign of recycle bin either before or after the reboot.