sjoens Posted January 28 Share Posted January 28 (edited) Dell Alienware 17 r3 (2016) laptop. After reformatting the SSD and a fresh install of Windows 10. Now every so often the fan kicks on for a couple of seconds at high speed bringing everything to a complete stop while doing so. This is not normal and not related to any power plan. I've searched the web for answers but nothing conclusive. Any ideas? EDIT: For some reason the CPU fan isn't running when it should until things get really hot. BIOS diagnostic hardware scans pass so it may be dust. Edited January 31 by sjoens Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mettelus Posted January 28 Share Posted January 28 Do you happen to have any Corsair fan controls installed? The only time I have seen this occur is from their drivers (and on a desktop), but the situation was rather unique. They actually drilled into the UEFI and adjusted clock settings, so had created a cycle of massive CPU heat generation due to extreme O/C inserts followed by "jet engine" cooling cycles. I had to go into services to manually disable that (was Corsair LINK 4 on this machine), then into UEFI to re-clock the machine. Barring that very specific, oddball situation, be sure to always run a laptop on a hard surface with the vent ports totally free from obstruction. Fans kicking in like that are triggered by a temperature threshold, so a utility to monitor all temps is warranted until you can find out what the fan is triggering on and what is causing the heat. Moo0 System Monitor is a lightly-weight utility that may help; the "portable" version is specifically handy because you do not need to install anything and can carry it around with you on a thumb drive to use when needed. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Baay Posted January 29 Share Posted January 29 4 hours ago, sjoens said: reformatting the SSD and a fresh install of Windows 10. Did you re-install the MOBO Chipset drivers? I haven't built a system from scratch for quite a while so maybe Win10/11 take care of this for you, but it used to be SOP for a fresh O/S installation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted January 29 Share Posted January 29 3 hours ago, David Baay said: Did you re-install the MOBO Chipset drivers? I haven't built a system from scratch for quite a while so maybe Win10/11 take care of this for you, but it used to be SOP for a fresh O/S installation. This. And this is definitely a case where we need to know make and model of your computer. Especially with laptops, and especially with Dell laptops, having the latest system drivers from the laptop manufacturer is essential. Sometimes you can update individual components like the NIC driver, but the chipset drivers, which include the ACPI driver that handles things like fans, are specific to the model of laptop. Also, have you given the ventilation ports a good blast of compressed air lately? Laptops act like stationary Roombas when it comes to sucking up dust, and of course dust impedes performance of the cooling system. Go into your BIOS settings and check to see if anything has been reset that shouldn't be, like C States or anything else you wish to enable/disable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sjoens Posted January 29 Author Share Posted January 29 (edited) Geez, forgot about that... updated OP. No way to see or adjust fans on this model. Not even their own command center utility will do it. So I spent hours looking for a fan utility that would. Most do not but I finally found HWiNFO that not only monitors but lets me control them. We'll see if my settings work. Of course this is only a bandage. There's still something wrong that needs diagnosed. Probably an 8 yr old MoBo on it's way out. One online Dell Troubleshooter hardware test that failed was PCI-Bus, but no explanation as to what failed. Edited January 29 by sjoens Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted January 29 Share Posted January 29 How did I know it was a Dell? ? Well, 'cause I am a (no pun) fan of their products, specifically the second-hand office workhorses that get retired by large companies 3 or 4 years after purchase because, y'know, the new employee can't have a better computer than her manager, or they get bogged down with crapware and accused of being "too slow," etc. I'm typing this on my Dell Latitude 7480, which replaced my trusty Latitude 6410 a year ago. The 6410 had been a freebie from an IT manager friend who got a stack of them for his kids at a corporate yard sale and had one left over. It was a great Cakewalk slab right up to retirement, and I'm planning on sending it up to my mom, who wants a Windows laptop for when her documents can't print from her iPad. 8G of RAM and I souped it up by replacing its i5 with an i7. I also ran an Optiplex 7010 as my main DAW up until a year and a half ago. i7-3770. This Latitude cost me all of $50 on Craig's List, from another corporate yard sale, and was lacking a main drive and memory. Total outlay for the computer, a major system update: about $125. They're rugged as hockey pucks and run forever. At one point I dropped the 6410 about a metre to a concrete floor, was sure I had killed it, but it booted up and ran as if nothing at all had happened. No screen damage, not even any case damage except for a scuff on the corner that hit first. As I said, with anything Dell, make SURE you download and install their latest driver packages. They are the most picky about this of any manufacturer I can think of apart from Apple. The generic or component manufacturer specific ones that Microsoft installs are not enough and will likely lead to just the kind of behavior you're seeing. You might later get better graphics results from installing nVidia's updated drivers, but always start with Dell's. If the nVidia driver borks something, you can roll it back. Also, along with this, make sure your BIOS is updated to the latest. For your computer, the most recent one came out in 2021, so if you've never updated it you're at least 5 years overdue. Dell's support pages show only the major reasons for BIOS updates, of course the engineers sneak other improvements in there as well. With Dell, no worries about a driver or BIOS update causing trouble because of the position and reputation they must maintain for corporate users: you can't roll out an update and have it brick 1000 or 10,000 critical path systems. Glad to see that you snagged HWINFO. Great tool, I use it often to see what my system is up to under the hood. It helped me figure out that my Latitude 6410 was having overheating problems after the CPU swap, which I went in and solved. The system will put your system into a throttled state if it sees your CPU getting too hot. And that's one of the reasons you need to get with Dell's latest drivers and BIOS: that's how your system monitors all this stuff. If it's suddenly getting the (true or false) idea that your system is overheating, it will turn the fans on full blast and throttle the CPU speed down to protect it from damage. HWINFO includes a history feature to show you what the peak and minimum stats are, so let your system go into that error condition and then check what the temps and clock speeds jumped or dropped to. Yes, dust blast it. Check HWINFO's temp stats before and after and see if it makes a difference. Also observe whether a huge dust cloud comes out. You shouldn't need to run any special fan control software. That's treating the symptom, not the cause. The Dell BIOS and drivers and so forth should take care of it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glenn Stanton Posted January 29 Share Posted January 29 (edited) +1 on Dell - until just this past year, i only used Dell computers (and since like 1990) and my previous laptop was a secondhand-me-down Dell which once cleaned, new SSD drives (replaced DVD drive with SSD OS disk and used higher performing internal connect for the project drive), and OS (W10), no option to expand memory on this version beyond the 8GB it had, it worked perfectly for several years as a DAW machine. the Dell is still alive and sits under my HP at the moment. i only really updated to the HP because a) was on sale, b) i needed it more for my studio design work (vector CAD and rendering) (and it brought my processing down into the seconds and minutes vs hour or more rendering - a CPU-intensive CAD and a GPU-based rendering product). Edited January 29 by Glenn Stanton 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sjoens Posted January 30 Author Share Posted January 30 This model is known for running hot so it's peculiar at least that it's one of a few that has no heating/fan monitor app as most Dells and some other Alienwares do. Thanks for all the tips, I've gone thru all of them and more... and even wonder if one of them may be to blame. Sometimes leaving well enough alone is best. But this is the worst thing to happen in 8 years. I've got a pile of older HP laptops that ran fine and still would if the batteries could be replaced. The HWiNFO64 bandage certainly cools things down a bit more but the issue of fans kicking into hi gear still remains, so more work to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted January 30 Share Posted January 30 Does this sound like it might apply to your situation? Caused by Dell's extra system monitoring software service: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sjoens Posted January 30 Author Share Posted January 30 Pretty much. Didn't see this particular one as there's a slough of 'em now. I never used that service before this. I ran the online tests and diagnostics and installed a bunch of drivers and latest BIOS. I've removed the "DELL Tool" to see what happens next. Also ran the basic Pre Boot test but may go back and run the longer ones overnight. HWiNFO64 seems to be holding it's own ATM as I can't afford a freezup during a DAW session. Can't figure out how to have it running on boot up so I have to invoke it's power each time. It opens with Windows but the Fan Control has to be opened by me it seems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mettelus Posted January 30 Share Posted January 30 Is this happening frequently enough that you can see if there is a process is spiking the CPU before the fans kick on? It is quite possible that the fans are functioning "as expected" but there may be a background app triggering the fans that may not be properly scripted to throttle itself based on CPU temp. Task Manager may be helpful if this occurs frequently enough. On the Processes tab if you sort descending by CPU, something may obviously bubble to the top of that list before the fans kick on. You can also leave it running behind the left edge of another app and squish down the "Name" column and move the CPU column next to it so you can leave it running but still monitor it while you are doing other things. There are also a few "phone home" processes that try to do their business as quickly and stealthily as possible, so putting the machine into "airplane mode" would be another option to check. Most of them will not trigger at all without a live internet connection. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sjoens Posted January 30 Author Share Posted January 30 Nothing stood out when I checked last but am keeping an eye on it. Airplane is always on when not online. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sjoens Posted January 31 Author Share Posted January 31 (edited) Resource Monitor revealed Dell.TechHub.Instrumentation.SubAgent.exe was to blame. Removed and all is fine. Thanks for all the suggestions. Edited January 31 by sjoens 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted February 21 Share Posted February 21 3 hours ago, wiviv said: Hello. suddenly my laptop's fan started and never stopped again! even when I restarted the laptop or even shut it down! it works as soon as I turn it on! I suggest you try the things discussed in this topic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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