I have the same machine and experienced the same problem. After much messing around and some research I eventually plucked up the courage to take the lap top apart. Once apart the CPU is obvious and has some copper (heat sink) piping leading to a fan unit. I blew this out using an air compressor and felt somewhat ashamed of the clouds of dust which then settled over the entire kitchen - if you can I recommend doing this outside.
After putting the laptop back together it ran much cooler; sure the air coming out of the vents was warm but nothing like as hot as before. Although warm I did not get any more random auto shut downs. However, the fan was a little noisy but not screaming like before but nor was it silent like it was when new.
I decided to replace the HDD as the original disk was pretty full and loaded Win 7 Pro rather than Win 7 Home Pre (as I wanted to do network back-ups). In doing this I lost the Sony software that came pre-installed. Some of it has been recovered through the Sony web site but not all as I became frustrated and then totally bored trying to figure Sony’s various downloads on their web site. However, after installing the new HDD and Win 7 Pro I had a very cool running, silent and quick laptop – just like new. Brilliant! This all happened Aug 2014.
It’s now June 2015, the new HDD is filling up and the lap top is becoming more vocal and running a little warmer. On the Sony VPCF12Z1E with just Outlook and IE open and malware and anti-virus running in background I am using 3.5GB of memory. My desk top PC with the same anti-virus and malware applications ticking over in back ground, Outlook and EI open on the same pages, it is using only 1.28GB. Why the huge difference? If I look into the Windows Task Manager under processes there is a big difference in the memory consumption for Outlook and IE – all the other processes are using near similar amounts of memory (but the anti-malware numbers are higher on the lap top).
Laptop Outlook 121,000kb EI (x4) 660,000kb
PC Outlook 43,000kb EI (x2) 65,000kb
If I use IE intensively – say 8 pages open simultaneously then the memory number rise as you would expect, but the laptop goes up to 1,455,000kb and the PC with the same pages open only goes to 160,000kb. If I use chrome rather than IE the difference in memory usage is similar but overall chrome uses a bit less memory. As memory usage increases so does the heat produced by the laptop. Surprisingly, CPU usage only has a limited effect on heat. I have a large excel spreadsheet with macros that runs on a live data feed and this can run all day with only a marginal effect on heat even though the CPU is constantly running between 20% - 70% of capacity.
So from the above I deduce that memory intensive application make the CPU fan work harder, but CPU intensive application do not?!.
In this house I have 4 laptops and 3 desk top PC. Of the 4 laptops one is a Dell and the others are older Sony’s. Only the VPCF12Z1E seems to suffer high memory usage on Outlook and IE/Chrome, why is that and can anything be done?
PS Settings on all computers for add-ons are the same.
