A2D cooling fan non-stop running

Well guys, let me join the list. I'm also having the problem with A2D fan not going off even when CPU temp falls down to 35C. And what's more annoying, my CPU recently started to heat up to 90C when playing some games (even while the fan is running on 5000 rpm).

 

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

 

I cleaned up 2 air inlets at the bottom and temperature now reaches 86C. Still too hot. I'm seriously considering thermal paste.

 

I think reseating the CPU/CPU heatsink would be the best option (while applying a thermal compound such as Arctic Silver, of course)
That way, you know exactly what's on the CPU

ASUS M6800Ne, P-M 1.5 Dothan, 512MB Ram, Tohiba Combo drive, Samsung Spinpoint M 40G HDD with 8M cache, Mobility Radeon 9700

 

Can other owners of A2D please tell me what CPU temperatures they read with Asusprobe while playing latest 3D games.

 

In HL2 AsusProbe on my A2D shows from 60-68,69C.While surfing or when i write some docs
it`s shows 50-58...I use SpeedswitchXP v1.4 and in Max Baterry mod when the AC is plugged
in(400 Mhz),fan kicks every 1-2 minutes for about 10 sec.In Max performance mod, fan kicks
all the time (2133Mhz),but i use this mod only when i play games,so in that case fan noise
is not a problem...

 

This thread is dedicated to the problem of the A2D series where the fan does not stop at all and remains on forever, even with a very low notebook activity. Please, if you have a temperature problem, open a separate thread.
These are clearly two separate problems.

 

You're right escape707. My apologies. Hector thank you for your answer.

 

Hey there all a2d unhappy customers. I've had my a2d back to get warranty work done for this reason and others I've now had a dvd/rw change a video card change and two m/board changes, to begin with i was having networking prob's. My temp was running fine until the last m/board change, now the fan is on constantly and has frequently hibernated while running 3d games because it was hitting the 90 degree mark. I had a funny thing going on for a while where the temp would be 70+ as soon as i turned it on and if i pulled the power lead out it dropped to below 50 and if i put the lead back it stayed there. Now the fan is on constantly and it still runs hot! grr. Now they want to change the m/board again. Very frustrating!!!!

 

It's very odd to see such consistency in problems with this one series of notebooks...
I wonder where ASUS screwed up.

ASUS M6800Ne, P-M 1.5 Dothan, 512MB Ram, Tohiba Combo drive, Samsung Spinpoint M 40G HDD with 8M cache, Mobility Radeon 9700

 

I don’t think it is necessarily Asus screwing up, rather they have taken a certain technological approach to CPU cooling in the A2 range of notebooks and it has resulted in some very odd fan switching and temperature level presets. I don’t think the fan operations in the A2 are that unusual when compared to the majority of other laptops and notebooks. Unfortunately until technology improves and heat comes down without the requirement of mechanical cooling (i.e. the fan) it is always going to be an issue.

I do feel that Asus could revise the Power 4Gear application to balance fan operation better on the A2 but would imagine this is highly unlikely with an outgoing range of notebooks.

Just have to get used to the fan noise people and enjoy, for the price, one of the most competitive notebooks out there!

 

The fan remaining on issue if really bad though, and the fact they ignore our messages in the tech support is pretty bad too.

Imagine you buy a car and there is a noise when you drive, but only at certain times. You bring it back to your dealer but he cannot actually reproduce the problem. Basically, you waste your time. You HAVE to cope with your problem.

I can tell you you would feel pretty pissed off, and feel really screwed.

 

I have the same problem as you all.
When the temperature is too hot, the computer shut down. So I can't play anymore any 3D game !

While I'm surfing, Asus Probe shows: 91C/195F / 5000rpm / 100%

The temperature cool down when I installed CPUHotFix (or was it something else?), but after one or two rebbot, the problem came back...

Is there a problem with the "LID Switch" (error message when I start my Linux Distro)

I hope we'll find the way to cool it down !

 

Hi minos1604,

See "About Asus's technical supports attitude":
http://www.notebookreview.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=10088

Also note we are not interested in this thread by an overheating problem (the title of the thread is "A2D cooling fan non-stop running"), only by a problem where the fan stays on even when the CPU has a very low temperature and the notebook is nearly idle.

 

thanks for the link above. I'll check it out.

 

Hi,

this is my first post on this forum so hello to everyone.

I to have the A2D notebook fan problem as described in this topic and I think we all have come to the conclusion that this is in fact a software issue and that there must be a solution to this. I refuse to belive that there isn't a driver or some sort of patch that would help us with this problem. So let's just keep on trying our best to resolve this issue.

Has anyone thought that this might be a windows issue? Take a look at this topic... http://www.notebookreview.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=8525

 

Yes, it is Windows issue, because with Fedora Core 3 linux there is no fan issues.

Drivers with XP are made by Asus.(That's what I believe, I might be wrong.)
If there is only Windows drivers present, then Asus hardware is not working as it should. That leads to conclusion that Asus hardware is not made to obey standards. No one else than Asus can solve it, because you need to know hardware specific things etc. This kind of information is manufacturers secret.

I've lost my hope a long time ago....

 

The only thing we can do to draw Asus attention on this problem is a concerted action. How to carry it out, I don't know.

Another method would be to find a way to make the problem 100% reproducible and bring the notebook back to the shop, before the warranty expires.

 

Has anybody else noticed that fan doesn't stuck on if running on battery?
At least my A2D hasn't done that when on battery power. I have almost all the time external AC/DC power plugged in, but sometimes I take my computer to other room (love that wireless network!) and it's running on battery.

As far as I can remember, fan has always worked correctly when battery powered. But when AC is connected and fan issue shows up again, removing AC doesn't help. Fan runs all the time with battery also then. When running on battery Windows changes automatically to other power mode? If there is different kind of drivers for battery mode?

I ask all you A2D owners to test if this is the case. Do you have fan malfunction on when running on battery? Please report.

If this seems to be true, could there be the way to cheat computer to think that it is running on battery when it isn't? I'm not sure about this, just came to my mind...

 

Same here...

 

I have been reading this thread sing a long time now, just not contributing because I had nothing useful to say except "same problem here" and "asus support and linus are of no help" (I experienced a mail from this guy on the subject, yes).

I'm here to say one thing: I noticed an overheating issue. But before escape jumps at me saying it's not the right topic, let me explain what I have found (and maybe try to see if you can reproduce it?).

Here is the test case, laptop on AC:
* First, put the laptop on a plane surface, and let him cool down until the fan stops, with speedswitch in dynamic mode. Temperature shoud be near 50°C
* Now, let's play with speedswitch, and set the mode to max performance, so that the cpu runs at 100%. Temp goes intantly to around 60°C, and slowly goes up to around 68°C.
That shows a first problem with how asus probe report the temperature, as it seems to be correlated with the speed of cpu. This problem could also be related to the thermal sensor, of course. This is a problem, because there is actually no physical way the temperature of a cpu could jump through 10°C (from 50 to 60) so quickly.

My point: if this behaviour is reproducible, and for me it is a fully working test case, then it shows a default either in asus probe computing the temp, or in the thermal sensor reporting the temp to asus probe. And if there is a bug in how the temp is reported to the other parts of the system, then maybe when the fan is running non-stop, it is because of this bug...

 

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

 

Hi Yoram,

I am not using my notebook right now. The question is: what is the temperature reported by Asus Probe after the fan remains on for a while... My experience is that the temperature does go down, meaning that the thermal sensor does work ok, but for some reason fan control isn't working at it should.

Nothing new...

 

escape: the temperature does not go down, it just keeps getting higher until the fan reaches the 5000rpm, and then it stabilizes around 75-76.
I also just noticed that the behaviour I described is not fully reproducible when you just turned the notebook on.

underpantman: france is nice, but people there not so much

Also, please excuse my poor english, some people even told me I could sound rude without wanting it. See you.

 

I've read almost every post in this topic, but i don't share your problem, my fan turns on at 55C and turns off when it goes under this temperature.. Usually when playing games (Splinter Cell, NFS Underground) the temperature stays stable between 55 and 65, fan running at 3000RPM. This is in AC mode... I dont play games on battery mode..

But when i'm working in battery mode the fan only turns on every 15/20 minutes or so, very brief for 2 seconds. (using SpeedSwitchXP)

The only problem i have that when i'm running on battery, and i put my speedswitch to Max. battery saving the battery's max perfomance time is 2.45 hrs is this normal? I find it rather short.

My laptop specs are:
...
Asus A2500D

AMD Athlon XP-M 2600+
40GB Harddrive
64MB Ati Radeon 6700 series
1X 512DDRAM
...

 

Ehmm in dynamic mode, the fan is off and temperature is at 45C. Steadily rising up to 50 and staying around 50C. Sometimes the fan goes on, every 15 or 20 minutes for 2/3 seconds, then it goes off again.

Even if i put my laptop to max performance (AC) and its running at 2000Mhz constantly with brightness set to 100% the fan doesnt always go on, only when it gets above 55C it turns on, when it goes under the 55C it turns off again. When i was playing a game for an hour the fan was constantly running, temperature was around 65/70C didnt get higher than 75C But when i resumed working surfing on internet and stuff in full mode the temperature did drop and got below the 55C again and the fan turned off as it should.

 

OsirisNL, what's happening when you are in front of your desktop surfing on the web with Speedswitch in Dynamic mode?

 

You will see that actually the fan does not turn off as it should after some time. Sometimes the problem happens after 10 minutes, sometimes after several hours. I don't play games by the way, so I can't tell you whether the fan stays on when the CPU stays at full speed (2133Mhz) for an extended period of time.

 

@OsirisNL:

Could you tell us which drivers and BIOS you have installed?

 

OsirisNL, if you are absolutely sure your fan is behaving normally without ever staying permanently on after an extended period of inactivity (or low activity, like just surfing), then we would like to know more about your configuration.

 

My bios version is 0205, and the drivers, ehmmm i never changed any i think...

 

Here guys i made screenshots so you can see for yourself, at the moment i took these screenshot my laptop has been running for 1 and a half hour in dynamic switch mode on AC.

fan=off below 55C
http://members.home.nl/dennisberg/temperature/temp1.jpg

fan=on at 55C
http://members.home.nl/dennisberg/temperature/temp2.jpg

 

Hi OsirisNL!

So you are absolutely positive that you have never had any fan issues with your A2D? How long have you been using it? I think your notebook is little bit older than mine because your BIOS version is 0205. I have 0208, it was already there when I bought this.

Have you installed cpu hotfixes or something like that?

 

Hey there, i bought mine June 2004, so its about a +/- half year old now.. Well i did have some fan issues but not with this A2D, when i bought my A2D the fan was constantly running, but after 2 days that laptop refused to turn on any longer... So i got a new one from the company (this one) and never had any problems, maybe it has something to do because i had them let change mine (memory) from 2X 256 to 1X 512, i dont know but could that be it?

Ehmm no i never installed any hotfixes...


(running almost 3 Hrs now, fan is still off)

 

Hi OsirisNL, would you mind answering the following questions:

- do you have Service Pack 2 installed?
- do you still have Power4Gear installed (even though Speedswitch is installed as well)
- what processor driver do you use? Right-click My Computer and select Properties. Click Hardware then Device Manager, then go under Processors. Right-click the AMD processor entry and select Properties again. In the Driver tab, what is the date and version number?
- what is your ACPI driver version number? Still in the Device Manager, but under 'System devices' then select 'ATK0100 ACPI UTILITY'.
- what is your SiS Accelerated Graphics Port driver?

My configuration follows:

- BIOS 0205 (like yours)
- amdk7.sys version: 5.1.2600.0 4/1/2004
- ATK0100 version: 1043.2.15.31 1/5/2004
- SiS AGP version: 7.2.0.1160 2/20/2003

 

No i wouldnt mind at all, maybe i could help, you never know...

- do you have Service Pack 2 installed? :
YES

- do you still have Power4Gear installed (even though Speedswitch is installed as well) :
NO

- what processor driver do you use? :
AMD7K.SYS version. 5.1.2600.2180 1/4/2004 (European date dd/mm/yyyy) (believe its 4/1/2004 for you)

- what is your ACPI driver version number?:
1043.2.15.31 (5-1-2004) (again EU date)

- what is your SiS Accelerated Graphics Port driver?:
7.2.0.1160 (20-2-2003)

 

In other words, we have both the same configuration...

 

I have same configuration also.

I noticed that there is somekind of conflict in "Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Embedded Controller" and under resources tab. Do you have same conflict?
See picture at http://koti.mbnet.fi/hoohoo/conflict.jpg
(I have Finnish XP, so it looks strange to you, but you get the point...)
Any clues what this means?

 

Same configuration here except my BIOS is 0208... and I got the same conflict as Hyde...

 

I do have the same conflict too. OsirisNL I'm pretty sure you've got it too haven't you?

 

yup took me a while to find it, because it has a different name on my computer (language settings probably) but yes i have the same conflict.

 

Hmmm.... It would make more sense if Osiris didn't has this conflict, as his/hers computer is otherwise working well....[?]

I wonder what that conflict means. Is that another proof of Asus's bad product development? Maybe we should ask Microsoft's support (if there is any) what is causing this kind of conflict? Asus's tech support (=our dear friend Linus) probably won't give any decent answer for our questions, they just don't know and they are trying to hide that behind that gibberish what is their usual answer to any question...

It is pretty obvious that it is hardware related thing (I/O addresses messed up?) Although, it doesn't seem to affect anything, unless it is the reason for fan issues. As we all have this I/O conflict, I'm sure it was there right from the factory. As far as I can see, it means that there is something wrong in our notebooks. Or at least it isn't MS Windows compatible as the sticker below the keyboard says...

 

I don't think we should give too much importance to this conflict. The only conclusion we can draw is either:

1) some A2D have a hardware problem. Hyde, you exchanged yours and ended up with exactly the same problem. Go figure.

2) OsirisNL doesn't use his notebook sufficiently and has therefore not experienced the problem yet. That seems crazy, but honestly this is still a viable possibility.

 

i agree, i will keep monitoring my notebook, and if there may arise a fan issue in the future i will report it here.. Maybe ill just keep it running for a day (8hrs or so) with the AC plugged in and see what happpens.

I'll perform some tests this weekend and report them tuesday or so..

 

I manage to get my fan work properly with SpeedSwitch. All you have to do is to switch it to Max. Battery mode. Than it works on 400Mhz with no fan problems turning off.

Maybe sometimes fan turns on after a Standby mode, but just switch it into Dynamic any back to Max. Battery mode to fix that.
Sometimes 400Mhz is to slow (just for looking documents and pictures or surfing the web), to make it work on 800Mhz (for looking movies) without fan problems click Options > User policy at the bottom you have Forced throttle - put it to 60%. Than switch to Max. Performace and wala everything works great [ ]

To play games you need to put it back to 100% under Forced throttle to make it run with 2000Mhz and fan always on.

 

Check my post in http://www.notebookreview.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=9894 about CrystalCPUID.

 

fusio, this is a very interesting question: does the fan problem occur when the notebook is in Max battery mode? Definitely something to keep an eye on.

Speedswitch has a known bug when the computer quits Standby mode under Max battery policy: the CPU frequency is 2133Mhz and not 400Mhz as it should. CPU activity is at 100%. No big deal as you noticed, you just have to switch to Dynamic mode and then back to Max battery.

 

The SpeedswitchXP problem mentionned in the previous posts only occurs with Windows XP Service Pack 2.

 

Hi All,

wow, what a long thread, took a while for reading all this stuff. I stumbled into this thread, because I wanted to get rid of the problem, that the CPU-fan is kicking in every 1 or 2 minutes for just a few seconds with 3000RPM. I would prefer a slow constantly running fan. Though not solving my problem, I found a lot of useful information here, thanks.

Tonight I suddenly had the same problem as described in this thread. This happened after I started the "ASUS Live Update" (ALU.EXE) accidently (slipped out with the mouse).

I have to mention, that on of my first tasks, was deleting the ALU.EXE-Entry in the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE or was it HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRun???ALU.EXE (sorry I can't remember exactly).

@OsirisNL: Did You also deactivate or uninstall the ALU?

That might be a solution. I have to mention, that I have the A2D for just one week by now, so my experiences are not really reliable.

Here is my Configiarion:
Proc.: Athlon XP-M 2800+
BIOS: 0208
OS: WinXP SP2
Power4Gear: NO
SpeedswitchXP: YES (including the "Bug after Standby")
Drivers (Proc./ACPI/SIS-AGP): excactly the same as posted by escape707 and OsirisNL on 01/18/2005

I also have this "Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Embedded Controller" confilct mentioned by Hyde.

My CPU-fan kicks in at 55°C and stops at 50°C. Using a CPU-stressing-tool (look at http://users.bigpond.net.au/cpuburn/), the fan was constantly running at 4000RPM cpu-temp never raised higher than 70°C.

 

No i didnt uninstall ALU, but i believe it doesnt work properly since it always says the environment is (in) no need for update...