M17x R2 Fan Making Grinding Noise

When my fan revs up during startup and intense use, it sounds normal initially, but then begins making a weird whirling noise. Aside from that, when I turned the computer on, instead of the red Alienware background on the login screen, it was the Windows 7 Home Premium default background. Any ideas? I'm very concerned

 

On top of that, a lot of other random stuff occurred. My system sounds were changed and the drivers were uninstalled for my wireless headset. So bizarre. I'm currently scanning for viruses, but I doubt a virus is the culprit for the noisy fan.

 

your fans may need a little cleaning,they're probably filled with dust.
Contact Dell if you have warrenty if not do a visual inspection inside and clean your system.

 

Ya they probably are. I'll pick up some canned air tomorrow. I don't dare open the thing up and void my warranty. As for the non hardware-related anomalies, I don't know what to do.

 

Never blow air from outside in,this will make the dust bunnies stay inside,they won't get recicled inside,the system will need to be opened one day or another. Just call Dell support and you shall be assisted.

-for the login screen - probably a windows update/you going back to a previous state reset it.

 

Might not want to run the laptop much with the fans sounding bad, I ended up having that happen to me (just the fan, sounded like a scratching noise almost) and it was a tiny piece of copper thread scraping the gpu side of the fan (ouch). Luckily I caught it within 5 seconds of the sound starting and I was able to remove it before any permanent damage was done. NFC where the piece of copper came from. Might have been a shaving off of the heatsink somehow (seems unlikely). Either way I keep my fans clean like a fanatic now.

 

As far as the log in background changing back to the normal Windows 7 one, mine does it from time to time too. Open Regedit, and do a search for 'OEMBackground' (without quotes). Double-click on the REG_DWORD called OEMBackground and change the value back to '1'. Then hit CTRL+ALT+DELETE. Your background should be the Alienware one again. Sometimes after Windows updates it changes back. That's all you have to do to fix it though.

 

The fan's have stopped now that the computer is on. Only really happened when I turned it on that one time. I should try rebooting it. Tried playing Black Ops just to get the fans going and everything sounded normal.

 

I second this being a regular occurrence.

 

Okay, I just checked my CPU temps and they topped out at 85 degrees.

*Bought myself some canned air. Blasted the hell out of all the fans with it. The fans are now sparkly clean and I didn't have the odd lawnmower-eque fan noise on bootup. Will have to check temps.

 

My laptop still got up near 85 with the cleaning...Should I have turbo mode activated or not?

 

leave turbo activated

 

Do you have that 940XM overclocked at all? BIOS or ThrottleStop? The XM chips are small heaters. What program are you using to heat the chip up?

 

I had OCed my 940XM with Throttlestop and 5% factory OC, but I changed everything back to defaults after I saw the temps getting too high. I never let them get above 85 degrees celsius and they were never near that for any extended period of time, so I doubt there's any permanent damage stemming from it.

 

Default multipliers on the 940XM are 25 right? It keeps reverting to 27 for some reason... I guarantee that's what the problem was.

 

Check your throttlestop settings.
It keeps them in memory until you reboot unless you have it set to remember after reboot as well.

D.

 

My Throttlestop settings are still set up for OC, but it's on monitoring only. Therefore it's not doing anything.

 

hey guys Do i need to reput the thermal paste or what ever its called when i remove my GPU so i can clean it ?

 

If your temperatures are fine and you're not removing the heatsinks for whatever reason then no. You can simply take the cards out and clean the fins.