Notebooks Sudden decrease in battery life + increase in temps

Hi, I've had my laptop, an Acer Aspire V3-571g for pretty much exactly two years now. Very suddenly, the battey life has decreased to almost half of what it was before and it runs noticeably hotter. SpeedFan used to give a reading of around 29-30 degrees at idle usage, now it has increased to 40-45 degrees. I know laptops get worse with age, but this change in performance occurred over a matter of days. Any suggestions as to what might be wrong/how I can fix this?

Thanks very much,

Ben

 

Have you run a malware scan, sounds like you may have a bit coin miner.
Check if the laptop is clean with something like Malwarebytes

 

Have you tried running the laptop with out the battery just plugged in to the mains? it's possible the battery is generating more heat when charging now it's on it's way out

 

I've downloaded MalwareBytes to run a scan now, I'll report back when its done.

Taken out the battery to test if that was the case, but it really didn't seem hot so I'm guessing that's probably not what the cause is.

Thank you for the speedy replies

 

I've run a scan, got rid of any malware and that seems to have done the trick as CPU temps are now back in the mid 20s to low 30s according to SpeedFan. Weirdly, RealTemp lists it as around 45 degrees, any ideas on why there's such a discrepancy?

 

The discrepancy probably comes from Speedfan and RealTemp reporting different TJMax temperatures.

IIRC The CPU doesn't report its actual temperature, it reports how far away from the TJMax it is.
Temperature monitoring software will count backwards from the TJMax to give you an estimated temperature, so if RealTemp reports the TJMax as 100 ºC and SpeedFan is reporting it as 85 ºC then this would be why you are seeing a discrepancy.

I have not used SpeedFan in some time but i would guess there is some setting that allows you to change the TJMax, and if you can be bothered you could probably look up your CPU to find out what the TJMax Intel specifies for it.

 

Interesting stuff, thanks for the input!