Toshiba Laptop, fan only turns on when I'm either idle or overheating

Question

There is a real problem with my fan on my Toshiba Satellite Laptop, it always works on max when I'm browsing the internet and doing stuff that doesn't do anything to performance but it turns off when I do.

Basically whenever I, for example, play video games it always either runs very quietly or turns off completely and my laptop is hot to touch in this state, then a warning pops up and it's back at 100%. It seems like it only runs when I don't need it and only when it screwed me up so much it destroyed the computer.

How do I change it?

I tried:

• BIOS, it is InsydeH20, really outdated BIOS and you can't change fan settings there.
• SpeedFan, my fan doesn't appear here,
• HWInfo, both 32bit and 64bit, no fan settings possible to change (fan icon doesn't show up),
• control panel, cooling policy doesn't appear, however there is an option called "Run at max when overheating", but I don't want it to run max when overheating, I want it to always run max.

It doesn't respond to any fan control programs.

Is there anything that can be done to fix this?

Answer 1

DISCLAIMER: This might trash your laptop!

I've had similar issues on my Acer V3-571G with insyde. There are multiple options: - Try to get a hacked "unlocked" BIOS. It might show up some options then. - Try this program, originally written for one specific Acer model but seemingly rather general. I guess that, if the embedded controller is the same or similar, this should work: Fan Max FanSetQt

The first program is a fork of mine from neduard, basically just cleaning up and providing binaries. The second is a GUI-wrapper for the same. The "user interface" is pretty trivial.

Again: This might kill your machine. It writes some arbitrary values directly to the machine!

If it works, however, you will be able to manually set the fan to MAX and to give back the control to the BIOS. But you won't be able to shut down the fan completely.