Erratic Fan Speeds with 1505/6400 and I8kfangui

I have an Inspiron 1505/6400 notebook with both I8kfangui and Notebook Hardware Controller installed. As I live in a hot tropical climate, I set the fans to run at 'high' whenever the CPU temperature exceeds 52C. In general, this fan control works well but occassionally, the fan speed becomes erratic and starts to oscillate (i.e. it goes High for a few seconds, stops momentarily, and then goes back to High and repeats). I'm not too sure, but it seems that this happens after long periods of usage or when the CPU temperature goes above a certain value. The following are my auto control settings:

Turn on at 42, Turn off at 35, Slow
Turn on at 52, Turn off at 42, Fast
(all other temperatures: Fast)

Is this a bug in the program?

Also, does my notebook model have a second fan and is it possible to enable hardware sensore support and control the fan speeds in increments? Thanks.

Edit: By the way, I'm using I8kfangui v3.0 Beta 7. I also just noticed that switching to manual control and back to auto (when the temperature is below 52C) seems to temporarily solve the problem, until the temperature exceeds 52C again.

 

I noticed this too. I think this is happening because i8kfangui turns the fans on, but the bios then turns them off amd this continues on until the temperature is actually high enough for the BIOS not to turn the fans off (this temperature is not the same as the one at which the BIOS turns the fans on).

 

hmmm....but this doesn't seem to explain why the problem isn't occuring all the time. If I'm not mistaken, shutting down the notebook and letting it cool solves the problem on my next reboot. Until something happens to trigger it again.

 

well its possible that BIOS simply doesn't try to control fans below certain temp (when temperature control has not kicked in yet). This is just pure speculation though.

 

ahhh, I see what you mean. Is there no fix or workaround for the issue? Or does it not happen often enough on your system for you to be ticked off

 

actually I find it more like, the bios finally gives up. There is probably an error control and when the bios is unable to control the fan, it stops controling the fan. Generaly, every time I force the fan on and it spends 30 seconds oscilating, it stays on..for ever. I can control it with I8kfan, but if i shut down i8kfan, the bios makes no attempt to retake control of the fan and it stays on or off, what ever the last setting was. It fixs itself when you reboot of course.

 

I'm gettings this when I'm playing games... I think it is a point where i8kfangui wants to force the fans on high but the bios senses a temperature which makes it force the fans on low...

 

mmm this doesn't actually bother me on my laptop, since (I think) my i8kfan "turn on at.." settings are above Dell's "turn off at.." settings

 

hmmmm, try updating the BOIS if needed could be that problem?

 

It's not a problem with BIOS. I seriously doubt that updating BIOS will do anything to solve this problem.