My Inspiron's fan is running constantly after BIOS/Software update - Any ideas where to look to see what's heating up?

[kojack]

I have noticed since I did a bios and full software update my fan is running alot more than normal.  Any ideas where to look to see what is causing it?

[Aaron44126]

Thoughts...

 

1. Do a full system shutdown and then turn it on again from a cold boot, if you have not done that yet...  That will reset the EC if something about the BIOS update process itself caused it to change fan behavior.

2. Check Task Manager "Details" tab and sort processes by CPU usage.  Make sure there isn't a rogue background process gobbling CPU time.  (With today's many-core CPUs, even low values in the CPU use % column are concerning.  For example, in a system with eight logical cores [4 cores + hyperthreading], 12% CPU use [100% ÷ 8] represents a full core of activity, shouldn't be happening on an idle workload, and would most likely cause the fans to spin up.)

3. It's possible that Dell bungled the fan tables in the latest BIOS update.  Wouldn't be the first time.  You can roll back to the previous BIOS version and see if it behaves better.

[kojack]

4 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

Thoughts...

 

1. Do a full system shutdown and then turn it on again from a cold boot, if you have not done that yet...  That will reset the EC if something about the BIOS update process itself caused it to change fan behavior.

2. Check Task Manager "Details" tab and sort processes by CPU usage.  Make sure there isn't a rogue background process gobbling CPU time.  (With today's many-core CPUs, even low values in the CPU use % column are concerning.  For example, in a system with eight logical cores [4 cores + hyperthreading], 12% CPU use [100% ÷ 8] represents a full core of activity, shouldn't be happening on an idle workload, and would most likely cause the fans to spin up.)

3. It's possible that Dell bungled the fan tables in the latest BIOS update.  Wouldn't be the first time.  You can roll back to the previous BIOS version and see if it behaves better.

 

How can I back track bios updates?  I have tried everything else you mentioned. 

 

Edit:  I just looked in task manager my CPU is being used between 8-24% off and on.  Nothing to cause the fans to be hitting hard.  I use this system daily and never had fans going unless I was doing a video edit encode etc.  

[Aaron44126]

3 hours ago, kojack said:

How can I back track bios updates?  I have tried everything else you mentioned.

 

Go to dell.com/support, look up your system model, and go to driver downloads.  You should be able to find old BIOS versions in there.  Just run the .exe to install.

 

Two gotchas:

• Occasionally they release a BIOS update and you will see in the release notes that you can't downgrade if you upgrade to this version.  It is not always possible to downgrade.
• Also, in BIOS setup there is an option to block BIOS downgrades, which you might have to disable.

[kojack]

A new Bios was released this past week. It fixed all the issues, and make the system much faster in the process.  I think they gooched the previous one and went to work resolving those issues.  All is great again. Got extra battery life while unplugged, get faster system use and quiet!  phew!