A2500D fan sometimes never turns off

I have noticed that sometimes the fan turns on then never turns off, even with XP power management set to Laptop mode, or with SpeedswitchXP in max battery mode (eg. dynamic switching).

In this case the only solution to put temporarily the notebook in standby mode, then everything is back to normal. I haven't found a way to turn it off otherwise.

Any ideas?

 

This seems to be a v.common question at the moment (so my post is directed to everyone), ie fan always on/noise. At a guess I would say the fan is on because its hot(ie CPU). I believe that notebook users are concerned about the wrong thing here. When you take what is essentially a desktop CPU (in your case a AMD althlon XP)that is used to having a huge heat sink & high speed fan running contantly and then place it in a small tight environment with poor thermal conduction in comparison, I believe you should more concerned with heat damage/over heating rather than a bit of extra fan noise. So my question is why would you want to turn the fan off ????? A laptop is an expensive toy, I would kick myself silly if I fried the CPU & destroyed the computer for a few less decibels.
Try running ASUS probe and take a look at your temp, I bet that when you turn on your notebook CPU temp is around 30C (no fan), then rises to around 45-55C pretty quickly, the fan should then kick in and keep the temp stable at around this temp. If you turned off the fan I'm betting that the temp would rise sharply and your notebook would either shut down or your CPU would fry.
Try it if you dare.

If I have scared you enough about the dangers of heat, some have reported that putting good quality thermal grease on the CPU really helps with heat reduction, and may help to reduce the reliance on the fan for cooling.

a

 

The problem is not the few extra decibels!! It's the power consumption! The more and the quicker the fan turns, the more it spends energy and the more the working time on batteries diminues. That's what troubles me! And, i'll ask once more time: My configuration is described in my signature. How much time should this laptop run on batteries. Mine (with the fan always turning at 3300 rpm) works no more than 2 hours!!!! Thanks in advance!!


M6R:: entium M 1.5 Ghz 2048 L2 cache:::512 DDR 333mhz:::mobility Radeon 9100 IGP 128 MB max::::40 GB:::

 

I still stand by my comments as they were ment mainly for those with a P4, or AMD cpu. These draw a lot of power and thus create lots of heat. The PM is a bit different as its power consumption is much less thus less heat.
In your case I would be a bit worried if all of the fans are runing all the time and your battery life is suffering. The probelm is either a your notebook is getting abnormally hot and thus the fans are on for a good reason or 2 there is a problem with the fans, I would take it back to the shop and get it looked at.
2h battery life for general web surfing office work is below par for that notebook. My M6ne gets around 3-4h as stated by ASUS and you should get the same.
a

 

Sorry guys, but I think my message did not come across very well.

1) Most laptop users forget to check that XP is in Laptop power management mode or minimal power management mode, instead of "Desktop computer". This is extremely easy to check and most users do not do it. 80% of the "fan always on" problems are solved by checking this. A lot of messages in this forum are pointless because some people simply do not take the time to check this before posting messages. As far as I know, SpeedswitchXP does NOT change anything in the equation.

2) On my Asus A2D A2500D laptop the fan sometimes *DOES* stay on, even if I leave the computer and come back after, say, 20 minutes. In this case the CPU is very cold, and actually very cold even *BEFORE* the fan turns on, meaning that it is DEFINITELY NOT A CPU HEAT problem. Asus Probe shows that my CPU is at 25 degrees Celius after 10 minutes, which is abnormally cold!
In this case my question is:

Do you guys have experienced this particular behaviour?

By willingly putting the laptop in standby mode than making leave standby mode, the laptop is back to normal operating conditions.

Thank you!

PS: hey guys please take the time to read carefully messages in this forum.

 

Escape 707, Thanks for the extra info. To me it sounds like you do have a fan problem. It should turn off if its cold I would take it back and get this checked out.
a

 

Before the M6R, I've had a A2D notebook and I have noticed the same problem, which surprised me a lot, and I never managed to figure out how to fix it! I used to put it in sleep mode to make the fan stop! It may be a power management problem!!! Anyways I didn't like it and I've changed it! But now,my fan NEVER STOPS!!!!!
I've checked the power management options in windows XP, I've checked the options that the bios offers for CPU power saving mode and have put it to "maximum battery performance", When I power up the notebook, the temperature is about 45 degrees celsius and the fan turns at 3300 rpm. When I work it reaches 50-55 degrees and the fan speed rises! Though the fan never stops turning!!!So, I think it may be some problem with the heatsink!

M6R:: entium M 1.5 Ghz 2048 L2 cache:::512 DDR 333mhz:::mobility Radeon 9100 IGP 128 MB max::::40 GB @ 4200:::

 

I have same issue with fan. I guess it's some problem with ASUS's ADTD II (ASUS Dynamic Thermal Dissipation Technology II)

However my problem is different - I like when fan works all the time! It distracts me less than when it's turning on/off every now and then. And laptop is cooler, including keyboard, which is more comfortable.

Anyway some fan controling utility would be most welcome.

Jamaika: fan is most probably using <5W, which is nothing comparing to rest of system, so I don't think it affects autonomy.

 

From support I got an answer to use these drivers ATKACPI:
ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/nb/S5N/ATK0100_XP_040324.zip
CPU temperature must be under 50, turning off fan.[ ]

Has anyone problems with sound volume Fn key + down is working, but up and mute never? [ ][ ]

 

Thanks for the pointer, but are you sure this is not going to screw up my installation?

Have you tried that yourself and does it effectively solve the problem?

This ACPI utility is supposed to be for the S5N notebook series, not for the A2D series. If Asus did identify a potential problem, why don't they publish this ACPI utility on the A2D download page on their support web site?

I got the Asus technical support one month ago and they didn't help me much, pretending I was kind of hallucinating since they didn't hear of the problem before my phone call. I hate that kind of stupid answer.

Registering on their web site didn't help either. They asked me to reinstall a driver that has absolutely nothing to do with power management (not even indirectly), probably hoping that I wouldn't even try to understand.

 

Hi Hyde & Ascape707,

I think, I got the solution. I'm also using Asus A2D with AMD Athlon XP-M. I had gone through similiar headaches. Try upgrading to Service Pack 2 and make sure the processor (mobile AMD Athlon XP-M) driver's date is 4/1/2004 and version 5.1.2600.0 (Other than that keeps the problem). XP SP 2 has a newer driver for amd, if the newer driver is not installed, select update driver by right click on it at device manager window and let the system load newer driver.

Currently I running XP Pro with Service Pack 2. Fan activates at 55 C until it drops to 50 C, using Power4 Gear+ at GAME mode. Make sure you have the latest drivers from Asus. BTW, I'm running on Bios version 0208 which has already come installed with the notebook.

asus ftp-site: ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/nb/A2D/

Hope this solves your problem too,

Peacerist

 

Hi,

What's happening in this forum at the moment is quite interesting.

I'm happy to see some people here follow this story, as I am absolutely conviced there is something wrong going on with either the hardware or the driver/BIOS.

We have to take care here of what's exactly going on with our notebook, as level of support might drop in one year or so. My advice: users of the A2D, take care, and keep an eye on the fan and the power management.

If you go on the Asus ftp or web site today, you will see that they actually DID update their driver files for the A2D... yesterday.

The download page is here:

http://www.asus.com.tw/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=A2D&Type=Latest

They just changed the date of BIOS 208 file, A2D0208A.zip. The new date is Oct 9th 2004.

There are also new versions of LiveUpdate, WinFlash and the AGP driver package.

One thing remains unexplained though. There is a hot fix for the CPU driver, and the text file in the ZIP archive says that it fixes the issue described in Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q813383. It's very difficult to find some information about this KB article as it's been removed from the MS support site.

Are we supposed to apply the CPU hotfix once XP SP2 is installed?

 

Hi Escape,

That's an older file (CPUHotfix_XP_041008), Service Pack 2 has newer one with version 5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158). I haven't try CPUHotfix_XP_041008, while i was using XP with SP1, but if it doesn't work give a try to my solution, you won't get upset [ ]

An answer to your other post: The thing is amd driver has two component in pre-sp2 install as far as i remember. That is, an amdk7.sys and an acpi .sys (i could get the exact name right now) list in device manager under Processors/mobile AMD...'s driver list. The new Service Pack 2 replaces them all with a single newer amdk7.sys.

Indeed, silence is golden,

Peacerist

 

CPUHotfix_XP_041008 should not be needed, as Service Pack 2 for Windows XP does contain the fix for the problem described by Microsoft KB article Q813383.

Q813383 appears in the official list of fixes included in SP2.

Note that SP2 doesn't change anything regarding the fan problem.

--
a2dfanissues .AT. maxnet .DOT. co .DOT. nz

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by escape707

 

What you say is completely wrong, peacerist. This is just the opposite:

Service Pack 2 doesn't change anything. There is no engineering reason why SP2 could change something in any way, because only the BIOS can change the behavior of the fan. To a lesser extent, the ACPI driver can participate too. Unlikely though.

There is no standard way to control the fans. Think about it for two minutes: if there was, you could write a program to stop all fans and seriously damage somebody's computer.

Windows does not provide a programming interface to manage the fan and alter the behavior. This is extremely unlikely to happen in the future as there is no reason to do that.

Fan control is completely BIOS dependent. Fan problems with notebook computers were not uncommon in the past. A good example is the Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop, for which people have written a program called I8kfanGUI that fixes fan issues. This program uses private BIOS functions not officially published by Dell because incorrect usage would damage the laptop for good..

Only ASUS can be taken responsible for the problem we are experiencing at the moment. As a consequence I strongly suggest people to think twice before buying an ASUS notebook.

 

cool CPU = Good CPU. Im happy mine spins all the time as it will last longer!!! Why do taxis do 1million kilometres with the same engine that a family car does only 250 thou???? ever wondered? SIMPLE its because weather it is a combustion engine or it is a Electric motor, it doesnt matter as neither likes to be stopped and started as this is where 90% of the wear is made through expansion and contraction of materials plus surging caused when a motor starts......think about it and you will agree. Otherwise jump the fence and get a centrino (caugh "SLOW") processor. You want balls on a laptop you have to be able to pay the price. I own one and will gladly get one for friends even as they are my sort of laptop...........lots of power and reasonable price and most importantly Use my favourite brand of processor AMD!!!!!

Also if anyone wants i can get a hold of A2500D Asus laptops brand new VERY VERY CHEAP!!! RRP $3200 My price $2200!!!! Legit with tax invoice
spec:
AMD XP-M2800+,512 Ram,Radeon 9600PRO 64Mb Vram,60gb Hdd, 15" LCD, DVD R/W, plus all the usuals...but specially added Asus Wireless access point and b wireless card and USB Mouse and Nice Asus Carry Bag!!!
0403441570

AMD XP2800+,512DDR,15"TFT,60Gb, DVD RW, 9600Pro (MAD), love it looooooooove it!

 

Glad to find people encountering the same problem as i do. In fact, regardless of the power management utility used (power4gear, speedswitchXP or built-in Windows XP feature), any time the processor keeps on switching frequency, the fan ends running concstantly. It is kind of funny to see the temp dropping to 32 degC @ 400MHz. Well, in fact, it is not funny at all because I do not believe, as Betapc does, that the fan is gonna stand 3000 Rpm constantly forever. It is just not made for that purpose, and my A2500D look like a lot of things, but definitly not like a yellow cab !

 

I must disagree with betapc too...

Why doesn't all other notebooks that I've used and owned didn't spin their fans all the time? Because it really is not necessary when cpu is running at 32C @ 400MHz while writing e-mails etc. And when you are running with batteries, it is supposed that you don't want any unnecessary power consumption, e.g. cooling fan when temperature is low.

 

you must have mis understood me, it does switch on and off on batteries just not on power..............the idea is power saving remember!!! its not about sound........you want quiet get a centrino (caugh) but then again you want speed stop whyning. Anyway, ive used plenty of laptops too and done my own research on the matter and found the ASUS trumps up!!! i compared to stuff like MSI M510C etc and they all had no balls compared to the ASUS.............dont care.......love it
cheers
chris

AMD XP2800+,512DDR,15"TFT,60Gb, DVD RW, 9600Pro (MAD), love it looooooooove it!

 

Sorry but what you say is a pile of crap, betapc.

Most notebooks won't need active cooling when the CPU runs at 400Mhz constantly.

Asus sucks too bad on that one and the fan-never-stops issue, and it won't be long until I contact hardware sites (Tomshardware, Anandtech etc.) and talk about the fan issue.

I have got plenty of emails from people all over the world to attest that Asus A2D notebooks are faulty. My strong software engineering background will make it no hard to gain some credibility when describing the problem.

 

my Toshiba Qosmio f10 (yes a centrino...) has the same problem.
I run Windows XP Media Center Ed 2005.
It clearly is a bios setting.

Can´t we put our heads together and work out a bios hack ? There is a excellent page for this : http://www.wimsbios.com

 

Does anybody know if there is program which lists ALL running processes in XP?? I mean something better and more powerful than task manager, something like ps -A command in linux/unix .

I was thinking if you could find out which service is causing the fan problems.
It would be nice to see what processes are running under the OS. It might help if you could see what process dies or stops responding.

 

List of all processes:
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/listproc.htm
edit: or even better:
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp.shtml
but do you think it is a hung process ?

 

I tried to play a bit with ASUSDMI.DLL's export functions. There is a FanControl function exported there, calling it doesn't solve the problem.
An interesting idea would be to replicate I8kfanGUI functionality (see the SpeedswitchXP web site), eg. to send the proper SMBios command to the right device.
When you launch SpeedFan however, the only devices connected to the SMBios are the SMART device (can be used to read the HD temp), a IT8705 'SuperIO' device (not sure what it actually does), and the MAX6657 sensor device to read the motherboard temperature. Normally, there should be another device enumerated to control the fan. I tried other SMBios enumeration utilities, and none of them detect the presence of a fan control chipset for me (BIOS 0205A). This is bad luck really, since we could then work out the way to switch off the fan programmatically much like i8kfanGUI or SpeedFan do it.

 

good thoughts!
Could you post the utilities you used ?

 

The new version of CPU-Cool can read out ACPI-Tables.
http://www.cpufsb.de/CPUCOOL.HTM
could this help ?

 

Nothing can really help unless somebody figures out which chip is being used to control the fan, or which Asus-specific SMBios function can be used to control it.

 

I have noticed that sometimes my cpu gets very hot very quickly (90°C in a few minutes), and if I don't stop the big process, the computer shuts down.

If the cpu has less things to do, the temperature goes down to 60° in 30 seconds!

It's like the mesured temperature is calculated in function of the cpu speed...And that would be a bug

Or perhaps the CPU is indeed very fast to change its temperature...
What do you think?

 

I think this has absolutely nothing to do with the A2D fan always on problem... I suggest you open another thread with your problem.

 

I have the exact same problem with my M5N notebook, which i purchased yersterday! Not sure if I want to keep it at this point, since the fan is pretty loud and IS ON CONSTANTLY waiting till Monday to call Asus Tech Support!

My user Manual says the following:
There are three power control methods for controlling the Notebook PC's thermal state. These power control cannon be configured by the user...
1)The fan turns ON for active cooling
2)The CPU decreases speed for passive cooling
3)The system shuts down for critical cooling

My FAN never turned OFF, I guess that means it's always in the "active cooling", which makes no sense.

SO, does this mean we cant DO ANYTHING ABOUT our problem? ("..cannot be configured by the user..."

I really like this laptop otherwise, but am thinking of returning it! Should I? [ ]

 

Vladimir, you do not have the nasty Asus fan issue if your fan never turns off.
Get rid of Power4Gear, install Speedswitch and ensure you use Dynamic Switching. When you aren't doing anything particular your CPU activity should be very low. If it is high, then it means you have a program running consuming a lot of CPU resources, and as a consequence requiring permanent active cooling.

 

Hi all,

Kisses from Paris.

In August I've made this mistake to buy this AD2 asus notebook. I don't say I'm really disapointed by the notebook itself it rocks, but this fan never stop grrrrr.
I just want to try to explian clearly to the joe's who pretend that earing a fan is good.
I work all day long with my notebook, in the morning from time to time the fan switch on and off every ... 5 minutes and for less than 10 seconds it's good !
But one time that fan won't stop (you don't know when you're just sure that it will happen) and then for the rest of the day you have a vouhouhouhouhouhou.
This have 2 results the first one is that you get stress everytime the fan switch on and your attention is attract by that.
The second is when you have enought of that noise the only solution is to close ALL your application and turn off and on the notebook.

My offer is that I'm leaving to Taiwan in 1 and 1/2 month (my wife is taiwanese and I gain a job there)
Give me your complain and I'll personally deliver them to the commercial management of asus.

It's totally unaceptable that because they stop a product they stop the support. I've never saw that before since march no one driver or firmware realeased for this notebook, this really mean no one engineers work on it anymore.

I hope all together we are gonna find a solution because I love my note I just want to enjoy the silent.

Wanna good valentine's day ... do not hesitate. www.romancefromparis.com

 

Dear heath,

May be my english is not good enough to eplain the problem I'm facing, and sounds like many people are facing :
Sometimes the fan start and Never stop !even the temp of the cpu is lower than 32° degrees that's the problem.
The second problem is we have 0 support from asus concerning that !
There is a bug, where ? I'm not good enough to say, bios, soft, service pack .. who knows. But Asus HAVE TO take the request from them customer in consideration and not only reply stuff like "our computer are so good that there can't be abything wrong"

I'm not asking the moon to them just to find why this fan hang.
If you read carefully the post of most of the user this is what everyone face with AD2. And I also understand that noiselees notebook are impossible to create.

I just feel like Asus abandon them AD2 line to concentrate on other product and will leave the customers alone with this.

By the way I'm facing the same problem with SONY micromv camera I bought one the ... sony abandon the product no more update of the driver, doesn't work with SP2 no one care.

In my mind it's one month of salary I gave to 2 compagnies that just hace big and hudge careless about them customers. what a pity.

To step back on AD2 fan problem I've removed power 4 gear and sound's
the hang is less frequent. May be escape could comment.

Last think I'd like no one believe I've a personnal deal with Asus, I've bought a lot of Asus computer and that the first time I've to complain about them, I still recomand them product to everyone who's looking for good quality computer parts.

Wanna good valentine's day ... do not hesitate. www.romancefromparis.com

 

Chef

I think it’s unrealistic to imagine any laptop or notebook for that matter working silently for long periods of time. I've used several laptop and notebook computers and to be fair to Asus the A2 is not exceptionally noisy in the fan dept.

Whilst I agree using a software solution such as CrystalCPU can improve matters with current technology heat dissipation will always mean noisey cooling fans, unless of course you like liquid nitrogen!

I think the message to everyone is unfortunately one of put up and shut up from Asus.

 

Darn! Somebody from an Asus Repair Centre in Australia (AssyrianKing) has apparently popped in this forum, commenting on the A2D sound card issue:

http://www.notebookreview.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=14370

I am sure we would ALL love to know if he got notebooks back because of fan issues.

 

i havent yet seen any laptops come in with this fan problem you guys say your having, all i can suggets is updating your bios and also updating your pc probe to latest version.

http://www.asus.com/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=Tools

Asus Repair Centre Technician

 

I think we can consider that we are definitely fuc***

I remind everybody that I'm leaving in Taichung, Taiwan. So if enough people want to I'll carry your messages to Asus main office and make a sitting alone there [8D]

Let's hope this world will finally have customer care ....

Wanna good valentine's day ... do not hesitate. www.romancefromparis.com

 

Ok, so the latest Asus probe doesn't work with the A2D (version 2.23.04 at least). The last one that is working for me is the 2.10.

I think I have the last bios image too (208).

It's also funny that my pcprobe often reports I'm overheating when I'm playing, going at around 92-94°C (the limit treshold being 90°C). Well, I guess I will just wait for my proc to burn, then send it back to Asus before the end of my 2 years warranty... I find it quite strange, a notebook that overheats when in normal use (And no, I don't overclock anything, and never will...).

 

Try this new drivers, all problems gone with fan issue ftp://ftp.asus.de/pub/NOTEBOOK/A2x00D-DC/ATK0100/V1043.2.15.48(all-NBs-without-V6V).exe

 

These days I have more of a problem with the fan never turning on. After undervolting, while doing light work, it'll start out at a a few degrees above ambient and then slowly creep upwards during the next hour before it stabilize around 52-53C. At this point about the whole notebook is this hot. I would have loved to be able to run the fan at a reasonable speed like 1500RPM from 45-55 degrees instead of starting at the noisy 3000RPM@55. I have never been able to get the CPU hot enough to hit the 5000RPM treshold at 70C, so it seems like a bit of a waste.

 

My notebook is still under investigation.
The repair shop I've given back the notebook to promised to investigate this problem with Asus. I have done everything I could and somewhat pay the price for it - I can't have my notebook back quickly.
I would like to thank our moderator Underpantman for having accepted to mark the "A2D fan problem" thread as sticky. I really appreciated the help.