Originally Posted by
number_6
There is some risk running Speedfan. On my Dell Dimension P4D it crashed windows XP (simulated hardware fault and hard stop - something that doesn't happen too often except with bad drivers). Uninstalling Speedfan fixed things. Looks like Speedfan only works with the planars listed, and can do some harm on other systems.
Yep, I need to do further research before trusting any of these things. A co-worker just sent me a laptop that powered off a minute or so after powering on (not my job, but no one else does it). I removed the cover from the fan compartment and determined that the fan was failing. With the fan cover off the machine ran indefinitely. I tried several temperature monitors, but none of them worked with that laptop.
By observation, the CPU was overheating from ambient in less than two minutes!