Dell Fan Management — Software for controlling the Dell laptop fan speed

[Almighty1]

I am running Dell Fan Management - the version in your December 11, 2022 comment at the link 

on a Dell XPS 15 9570 using Windows 11 x64 Professional Edition 22H2 and there seems to be a major resource leak as it is using over 224,000 handles after 3 days, I manually run it as soon as I login to Windows immediately after the system starts as seen in the screenshot below from System Informer (formerly known as Process Hacker):

Also, a suggestion might be to actually include a version number or date in the about section.  Other than that, many thanks for providing the program.    

[Bravestskat795]

@Aaron44126 The installation link doesn't work

[alnath]

Hi there,

Refresh the link please 🙂

 

Thanks!

A

[Aaron44126]

The link posted in December still works.  I updated the top post in this thread with the appropriate link.

[Bravestskat795]

Thanks for updating the link @Aaron44126

I just have one question, why doesn't the manual control settings work? (I have a latitude 7490, i5 8250u, 32gb ram)

[Eban]

Runs well on my 17R1 

(unlocked A14+ BIOS)

 

[Aaron44126]

3 hours ago, Bravestskat795 said:

Thanks for updating the link @Aaron44126

I just have one question, why doesn't the manual control settings work? (I have a latitude 7490, i5 8250u, 32gb ram)

Check the first post, make sure you have the registry thing set to allow the driver to load, and if you do not, reboot after adding it.

[Gonzalo]

Hey there, wanted to ask if anyone has experienced system freezing whenever the operation mode is set to anything but the automatic mode. I've tried this application, - which I thank you so much for creating - HWiNFO and also Fan Control with the Dell Fan Management plugin. They all have the same behaviour: whenever you use a custom fan speed, the system will eventually freeze. The timing is inconsistent, sometimes it'll last up to 20mins, other times around 5 mins. It doesn't appear to be a temperature failsafe as I've had it happening at around 60°C in both CPU and GPU, and other times around 70°C, sometimes even less than those. Ever seen this happening?

[Aaron44126]

51 minutes ago, Gonzalo said:

Hey there, wanted to ask if anyone has experienced system freezing whenever the operation mode is set to anything but the automatic mode.

 

I used some variation of this on my Precision M6700 and Precision 7530 for a bit over three years and never had any issue with freezes.  I have heard users complain about it freezing briefly during an EC interaction (making a fan control change, reading the fan RPM, etc.) ... but those were always quick/temporary freezes and not something that you'd have to reboot from.

 

I'm not using it anymore, neither of my "daily driver" systems supports manual fan control since Dell changed how everything works starting with their 2021 systems.

 

What type of system do you have?

[Gonzalo]

Hey, thanks for your reply. I'm using a Dell G3 3579 (2018) with W11, it's got a GTX1050 and I5-8300H. I'm also using MSI Afterburner and ThrottleStop, both are completely and thouroughly stable in normal use. Could those be causing problems with the utility?

[Aaron44126]

16 minutes ago, Gonzalo said:

Could those be causing problems with the utility?

 

Doubtful.  It only issues commands to the Dell embedded controller (EC).  The only other tools that I am aware of that also talk to the EC are SpeedFan and HWiNFO.

 

In the end, this is "unsupported manipulation" of the EC's behavior and I'm not at all surprised if some models have issues.  Issues with XPS systems are well documented — for example, display brightness control from the keyboard breaks after manipulating the fan speed.  (I personally have ever only used this in a few Dell Precision laptops and one Inspiron.)

[Almighty1]

The link in the first post for:
NET 6.0 runtime (https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet/6.0/runtime, desktop x64) actually links to 5.0 and not 6.0

What is the "Restart BG thread" button actually used for as there doesn't seem to be a way to enable it as it's greyed out.
Thanks!

[Aaron44126]

52 minutes ago, Almighty1 said:

The link in the first post for:
NET 6.0 runtime (https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet/6.0/runtime, desktop x64) actually links to 5.0 and not 6.0

What is the "Restart BG thread" button actually used for as there doesn't seem to be a way to enable it as it's greyed out.
Thanks!

I'll fix the link.

"Restart BG thread" button lights up only if the background thread crashes.

[Almighty1]

On 3/31/2023 at 9:03 PM, Aaron44126 said:

I'll fix the link.

"Restart BG thread" button lights up only if the background thread crashes.

I managed to get the "Restart BG thread" to light up which happened when I installed the nVidia drivers.  However, it seems the program has hanged solid and not responding so had to restart the process using System Informer, formerly known as Process Hacker.

[sim892]

On 3/6/2023 at 3:13 PM, Aaron44126 said:

 

It needs to run elevated which is tricky.  Windows will generally automatically decline to run such apps at startup.  My suggestion would be to add a job in Task Scheduler, set it to run at login, and make sure "Run with highest privileges" is selected.

Hi! The application works great and I tried to run it as a job in Task Scheduler as you suggested, I also selected "run with highest privileges" as you suggested. However, at startup after login, the application starts, but with the following error:
 

[Aaron44126]

51 minutes ago, sim892 said:

Hi! The application works great and I tried to run it as a job in Task Scheduler as you suggested, I also selected "run with highest privileges" as you suggested. However, at startup after login, the application starts, but with the following error:

 

In your scheduled task "Action", make sure that you set the "Start in" field.  It should be the full path to the folder containing Dell Fan Management.

[sim892]

18 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

In your scheduled task "Action", make sure that you set the "Start in" field.  It should be the full path to the folder containing Dell Fan Management.

Thanks so much! I fixed it and now it works!

[sim892]

I just add an additional question: Do you know what could be the reason why the screen brightness controls on the keyboard of my XPS 9560 do not work when your fan control tool is running?

[Aaron44126]

3 minutes ago, sim892 said:

I just add an additional question: Do you know what could be the reason why the screen brightness controls on the keyboard of my XPS 9560 do not work when your fan control tool is running?

 

This has been previously reported and is a "side-effect" of disabling the EC fan control in certain Dell systems.  Unfortunately, there is nothing that I can do about it.  Any other tools that use the same fan control mechanism (SpeedFan, HWiNFO64) will have the same issue.

[Almighty1]

On 4/19/2023 at 10:42 AM, sim892 said:

I just add an additional question: Do you know what could be the reason why the screen brightness controls on the keyboard of my XPS 9560 do not work when your fan control tool is running?

Thanks for mentioning this and on my XPS 9570, it works correctly if you are talking about using Fn + the F11 and F12 keys.

[martin-london]

Hi @Aaron44126

 

First of all I just wanted to say a big thank you for developing this app!

 

Side note: I've had my Dell laptop for a few years and while overall it's pretty decent, the CPU always runs hot so I need some kind of fan controller but Dell's "Alienware Command Centre" is probably one of THE most bloated, poorly-designed apps I have ever seen (seriously Dell, a 1GB app that only works for a single user account, just to set a fricking fan speed!?)

 

 

I wondered if I could ask 1-2 questions, more on a house-keeping side of things...

 

❓ Question: Source/Download location: I noticed that the app has a link to your (old?) github project, but it doesn't look like the code has been updated for a while but it looks like updates are being posted here more frequently (the last one being just before xmas, etc)... So, in terms of which site to go to when checking for updates (and also your preferred place for people to report any bugs, etc) I'm assuming that the main site for DellFanManagement is this site (https://notebooktalk.net)?, rather than github?

 

❓ Question: Command Line options: Are there any command line options for DellFanManagement.exe please?... Would be good to know any options that exist (generally), but especially if there is one for launching DellFanManagement.exe minimised / without the showing the main windows? (when loading on login, etc)

 

Thanks in advance!

Martin

[martin-london]

Hi @Aaron44126

 

I also wanted to make 1-2 suggestions (request 1-2 tweaks) that I think would help make DellFanManagement even better, whenever you have any free time / are next making updates to the app...

 

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💡 Request/Suggestion: Update links in app/github: Assuming the above, it would be cool if you had some time to update the in-app "about" info and github homepage. Just that, currently:

1. The message in DellFanManagement.exe tells users to go to https://github.com/.../DellFanManagement
2. https://github.com/.../DellFanManagement then tells users to go: http://forum.notebookreview.com
3. http://forum.notebookreview.com doesn't exist any more!
4. So after following multiple links/redirections, I ended-up in a dead end and (at the time) didn't know how to get back to this site (e.g. I couldn't remember the URL, etc).

 

In the end even though I've been using the app since last year, the only way I found this page again was from google (rather than the link in the app) but while googling worked in the end, you might agree that it's probably not an ideal route (and is hopefully something that could be fixed in a few mins).

 

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💡 Request/Suggestion: Add version number (or date) to the "about" panel / binary properties: Again, purely reflecting on my own experience and thinking how a little change could make this even better... I saw the post of a new link (assuming new version) back in December so went to check if I needed to install this (i.e. I was running an older version of DellFanManagement.exe) but I wasn't really able to tell as the "about" panel said: version DEV, and the .exe properties say File version: 0.0.0.0... So IF you wanted to add a version number (or date published) that would be cool. 👍🏼

 

ℹ️ Info/Tip: I use a tiny utility VerPatch.exe which can inject version information into an already-compiled .exe file. (This has been really helpful for a few other great tools like FFmpeg.exe which don't put any version numbers in their binaries - but VerPatch.exe makes it SO much easier to check which version I have vs. the one currently available, (see example below)...

 

[I created a short URL for https://bit.ly/dell-fan-mgmt just for my own ease of reference, but please feel free (anyone) to use/save it if its handy -- it will automatically navigate to the most recent comment in this thread]

 

Anyway, my point is... If it's not easy to include a version number into the .exe / as part of the build process, but you like this idea instead, please just let me know and am happy to send you a link to VerPatch and a command line template for how it configure it. 👍🏼

 

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ℹ️ Info/Tip: Updating the registry automatically: As you note in your initial post, some users may need to add a registry entry to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CI\Policy] to enable all functions (this caught me out until just recently!)... I know you said you wanted to get DellFanManagement to prompt the user / do this automatically so wanted to help out on that bit (as I script a fair number of registry tweaks on my own system)...

 

You can get DellFanManagement to set this registry entry automatically by having it run the following cmd  (with elevated privileges) when it initiates... REG ADD HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CI\Policy /v UpgradedSystem /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

 

Hope the above notes are helpful! - Am happy to discuss any of these further if you want to explore in more detail or clarify anything.

 

Thanks again,
Martin👍🏼

 

[Aaron44126]

18 hours ago, martin-london said:

Hi @Aaron44126

 

I had a lot more "documentation" on NotebookReview before that site went down that has not made its way over here.  The project doesn't really have an official web site since NotebookReview went down.  I have many competing priorities for my time, and this project went way down on the priority list when Dell changed how fan control works with their 2021 and newer systems.  There is no known mechanism to control the fans on their newer laptops at all.  Since both of my main laptops are now above this threshold (and one of them is now running Linux to boot), I'm now in a situation where I have to go out of my way to even dig up a system to test with.  If someone ever figures out fan control for these newer laptops, I might look into finishing this up.  In the meantime, it is pretty much released in an "as is" state.

 

(Anyone is welcome to take the source code and run with it...)

 

There are command line options but they are not designed to be used in conjunction with the GUI.  If you give a command line parameter, DellFanManagement will do what you ask and then quit without ever popping a window open.  It uses the same parameters as the old "DellFanCmd" program and you can see them just by passing "-?" or any unrecognized parameter to the app.

 

Past builds did have a version number but for now I have just been kicking out occasional development builds without going through the proper release process, so that is why it shows 0.0.0.0 and "DEV" for the version number.

[martin-london]

Hey @Aaron44126 -- thanks for getting back to me and the extra info.

 

On 4/25/2023 at 8:05 PM, Aaron44126 said:

I have many competing priorities for my time, and this project went way down on the priority list when Dell changed how fan control works with their 2021 and newer systems [as] there is no known mechanism to control the fans on their newer laptops at all. Since both of my main laptops are now above this threshold, I have to go out of my way to even dig up a system to test with.

No worries, I can certainly appreciate both (a) having competing demand on your time, and (b) that it is unrealistic / unreasonable to ask you to support a tool that you cant even easily test yourself nowadays before it is only applies to laptop 3 years old or more! 👍🏼

 

 

On 4/25/2023 at 8:05 PM, Aaron44126 said:

If someone ever figures out fan control for these newer laptops, I might look into finishing this up.  In the meantime, it is pretty much released in an "as is" state. (Anyone is welcome to take the source code and run with it...)

I would offer to help if I could (I do various bits of development in several languages), but don't have any experience with hardware monitoring / control (sorry)... Also, following what I said above, "as is" basis is fine and understandable (thanks for clarifying) -- I just hope to god Microsoft don't change something and DellFanManagement stops working, as if I have to go back to using that 1GB+, piece-of-sh*t bloatware "Alien Command Center" just to manage my fans, I will be really unhappy! 🙈🙂

 

 

On 4/25/2023 at 8:05 PM, Aaron44126 said:

There are command line options but they are not designed to be used in conjunction with the GUI.  If you give a command line parameter, DellFanManagement will do what you ask and then quit without ever popping a window open.  It uses the same parameters as the old "DellFanCmd" program and you can see them just by passing "-?" or any unrecognized parameter to the app.

Ah OK, I don't think I know DellFanCmd but in the interim I have been using DellSetThermalSetting in a similar way, if that is more or les the same tool?... It is quite handy being able just to double-click something and change the fan mode to Optimized, or UltraPerformance 👍🏼

 

Not sure if DellFanCmd can do extra things on top of this that are worth me knowing about(?), but happy to experiment and try it out -- where's the best place to get it from plz?

 

PS -- Have been trying to figure out a way to bypass the UAC prompt when I do say DellSetThermalSetting.exe Optimized but no joy so far... Realise you don't have much time for this project anymore but just as you're familiar with this area, if you have any ideas you can share that would be great! (I was counting on the task scheduler 'hack' to do this but it didn't work).

 

 

On 4/25/2023 at 8:05 PM, Aaron44126 said:

Past builds did have a version number but for now I have just been kicking out occasional development builds without going through the proper release process, so that is why it shows 0.0.0.0 and "DEV" for the version number.

Fair enough, it was just a suggestion that came from me realising I had no idea if I was on the latest version or not -- but again, as you've said there's basically no updates planned at this time, then that's fine.

 

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Once again, thanks for developing the tool and continuing to engage with the community!

Hope everything goes well with your other projects!

Martin

 

[PS -- Just saw that you got back to me on the same day I posted! Thanks so much for getting back to me so quickly!... Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. I didn't get a notification / realised you had replied at the time and was just logging in today to check if there had been any updates -- will go and check my notebooktalk.net user/notification settings!]

[kiwiids]

thanks for developing great tool!

version3.0 works fine on my laptop(Ryzen 5625U), but I can't restore factory default thermal settings.

I tried hard reset(disconnect AC > remove battery > hold power button for 20 seconds).

Is there any way to restore default thermal setting? or “Optimized” is factory default one?