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I have a Dell Inspiron that is just out of warranty (of course). It started shutting down to protect from overheating, which is when I noticed that the internal fan was no longer turning on.

I rebooted into Dell's diagnostics and ran tests, and everything came out good. I could hear the fan spin up as expected when running the fan test.

I installed Speedfan to get some more information, and I could manually control the fan through that, but running Prime95 just heated everything up and didn't automatically enable the fan as it should. All of the temps appeared to be reading just fine. At this point I suspect that there is some software issue that is either not reading the temps properly or just not telling the fan to turn on automatically.

I saw that there was a BIOS update through Dell, so I downloaded and installed that. The weird thing is that as soon as it started installing the new BIOS, the fan started blowing like normal. And then as soon as the install was complete, the fan stopped...

Any advice on what this problem could be?

Edit
Windows Power settings have the cooling set to "Active", so I don't believe that's the issue.

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  • It's possible that the fan is set not to spin up to full speed. Check in the BIOS and in windows power settings for it.
    – Stese
    Commented May 9, 2017 at 13:11
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    Thanks - the Windows Power settings have the cooling set to "Active", and there is nothing in the BIOS that I can access that lets me update the fan settings.
    – Alec Sanger
    Commented May 9, 2017 at 13:17
  • How was the machine being used at the time? Were you on a soft or hard surface? Battery or mains?
    – Stese
    Commented May 9, 2017 at 13:21
  • Plugged in via AC at all times with battery. Mostly hard surface, but also propped up on the side so there is as little contact as possible.
    – Alec Sanger
    Commented May 9, 2017 at 13:24
  • You can find some advice here that can get you started. Have a look also at the fan to see if it has warped or wobbles or is not well-seated, and a bit of oil on the shaft may help.
    – harrymc
    Commented May 9, 2017 at 13:24

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In Device Manager, do you have any 'unknown' devices? Perhaps there is a Dell interface component which needs to be updated/installed again so Windows can communicate with the fan controller.

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