It happens to me often. I first learned about such heat buildup and the CPU affinity setting at Barnes & Noble. Sitting in a big cushy chair, starting a video saving or rendering with Movie Maker, and putting the laptop on the seat so it was nestled as I stand on the mocha line… to return to find the rendering didn’t finish, system shut down, and the seat cushion feeling hot. After a few times I realized the cushy chair reduced whatever air flow the laptop needed to keep it from overheating.
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Open your Task Manager [Figure 1] by right clicking anyplace on the task bar, the long bar with the start button and icons on it, usually at the bottom of your screen. It’s the same on
XP and Vista.
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The Affinity setting works on one process at a time. Find the process that is using most of the CPU energy. It could be Movie Maker, the Expression Encoder 2, or another video editing or conversion app that needs lots of CPU cycles to create a new video file [Figure 2]. Right mouse click on the line item and select ‘Set Affinity’.
If your system has 2 or more CPU’s, they’ll be listed individually.
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Simply uncheck one and press the OK button to stop the process from using it. You can do it while the rendering is happening. It’ll result in the computer using only half the computer power and generate half the heat. Don’t worry about making a mistake and unchecking them both, as the system won’t let you.
