Dell XPS Laptop

[bod]

I can't stop the fan from blowing flat out all the time? Battery life is down to 30mins, but to be honest it's just pissing me off now.
It's 4 years old & had a fairly hard life. I tried doing a system restore this morning, and it had to make a repair before restarting ... and the fan coming on again?

I'm not one to twat about with electronics or try getting them repaired - So if it's all over, let it be!

But if anyone knows of a quick fix worth trying or a suitable replacement for what has been an excellent laptop, I would be grateful.

The fan has always been a bit intrusive on the XPS, cutting in & out. My previous IBM Thinkpad did not do this, so I am leaning towards Lenovo as I believe these are just re-badged IBM.

 

[bisbee]

Try getting the dust out of it

 

[Grey Beard]

I would imagine it's poor cooling. I have an i7 Dell Studio, which has a bad design fault in its cooling of the Graphics Chip. The graphics chip had some sort of synthetic pad to act as a heat transfer route to the heat sink and this pad degraded over time. The Dell also used unleaded solder for H&S reasons and constant cycling of the temperatures led to failure of the Grid Ball Array (GBA) solder joints. I have to have mine redone (there are plenty of people in the Internet who do this sort of work), though I have replaced it with a more powerful unit.

I don't know if your Dell suffers from such a design fault, but I would look at the forums for Dell first.

It may just be a case of opening it, cleaning the fan, etc. and redoing the heat sink paste joints.

If you are worried about excessive software processes running in the background, then look at the Task Manager.

Grey Beard

 

[Clive]

Try getting the dust out of it

After reading what was involved to get at the fan on mine ( http://downloads.dell.com/Manuals/a...xps_laptop/xps-l702x_Service Manual_en-us.pdf )
I simply took the Dyson to all the obvious vents - side and bottom - worked a treat.

 

[bod]

Try getting the dust out of it

Had the back off it, had a poke around and sucked the life out of it with the Miele.

I would imagine it's poor cooling. I have an i7 Dell Studio, which has a bad design fault in its cooling of the Graphics Chip. The graphics chip had some sort of synthetic pad to act as a heat transfer route to the heat sink and this pad degraded over time. The Dell also used unleaded solder for H&S reasons and constant cycling of the temperatures led to failure of the Grid Ball Array (GBA) solder joints. I have to have mine redone (there are plenty of people in the Internet who do this sort of work), though I have replaced it with a more powerful unit.

I don't know if your Dell suffers from such a design fault, but I would look at the forums for Dell first.

It may just be a case of opening it, cleaning the fan, etc. and redoing the heat sink paste joints.

If you are worried about excessive software processes running in the background, then look at the Task Manager.

Grey Beard

Eventually found the Task Manager and noticed a lot of stuff in there that I wasn't aware of and never use.
Things like Roxio and Zumo Drive were removed from the Task Manager, as well as other programmes from the control panel.

Anyhow, something seems to have done the trick as the fan now kicks in intermittently at varying RPM, instead of bouncing off the rev limiter the whole time.

I know the Windows 10 update will install itself in the next week, so maybe that will open a whole new can of worms or shut the thing up completely?

I did look on the Dell website last night and the new solid state 15" XPS is a grand which puts it into MacBook territory.

But thanks for your help fellas, and I will add an update when 10 is up and running.