Fan problem

Hi, this is my first time owning a laptop and I just managed to recieve my Inspiron 1420 after it arrived for a month at my brother's place overseas. Buying a laptop in Australia is so expensive so I got my sis to bring it back to me. Laptops in Australia often come with dodgy specs at high costs.
My little question (worry) is if it's normal for a laptop to be expelling heat from the vents even when the laptop is completely turned off... It's normal right???
Thank you reading my troubles. Much appreciated. <(_ _)>

 

It's normal, if you read your laptop manual they even assure you that heat coming from your vents is an indication that your fan is working normally.

 

Completely turned off? Somewhat scary.

Unless you'd been using it for an intensive application (eg Gaming) just prior to shutting down. But if this is, say, half an hour to an hour after turning off, it's not something that I'd personally term as normal.

Quick counter question - Which part of Australia are you in, and what's the weather been like lately there?

 

Thank you for the replies!

@LordBug
I've been busy with changing options and installing programs so I didn't play any games on it... There's no heat or fans turned on right now but they still come back occasionally, unfortunately a new problem's arrived.

Quick counter question - I'm in Melbourne and the weather's been very moody. Hot and cold. Very stressful since it's also hayfever time for me.

Problem No. 2 : The notebook's not turning on at all... Turned it off during the afternoon. Been a few hours since then. No matter how I press the power button and wait. The first blue light counting from the left is blinking indicating that it has power but asleep. Manual says that it should turned on if I press the Power button. Did that. My bro over the phone said I might have uncautiously pressed the F8 button. I didn't. I'm sure that battery is fully charged.

Please someone help!

edit: No worry now! Although I still can't seem to find the reason, I'm able to turn it back on.

 

As for your fans, yes it is normal for heat to come out of the vents...that's why they are there in the 1st place!

But the fans should NOT stay on when the power is off! It's just like a car engine...when it begins to heat up, the fans come on to cool it down. But if you turn off the engine while the fans are on, the fans will stop too! Because once the power has been cut there is no way that the CPU (engine) can get any hotter! So therefore there's no reason to waste power keeping the fan on!

Sounds to me that there's either an option in the BIOS that has been set to leave the fan on after turning cutting the power, or there's a fault with the mobo!

 

The process of charging the batteries generates heat in the power supply, so even if you have the laptop turned off, there is still heat being generated while its plugged in.

 

but the power supply is NOT internal!

 

Based on my experience with D610 and M1330:
When you shut the lid if the PC is really off (in standby) then the green power LED will start to pulse on and off and I would expect the fans to turn off (at least not long after going into this state).
If the green power LED is still steady on then the machine didn't successfully go into the standby state and it is still on. In that case I would be very nervous about packing it into the laptop bag because:
(a) Could overheat
(b) Hard disk might still be active and vulnerable to shocks
(c) Battery may not last very long

so if you can't wake it up to try and shut it down again then you need to hold the power button 5 secs to force it to power off (losing the standby state in the process)

 

I had the same problem with my M170. I had to be REALLY observant when closing the lid to make damn sure that it went to sleep (by watchinng the power led pulse on and off).

Sometimes, it wouldn't go to sleep and the power light would stay on, screen blank, and my system would just COOK! Left it like that overnight once by accident and the screen was so hot from being closed and the fans were blasting I thought the system was fried. Only way to shut it down was to hold the power button for 5 seconds.

I never found out why it sometimes would go to sleep and others it would lock up like that, but at least you know it happened to someone else.

I am sure that is what is happening to your system. Be careful and make sure it goes to sleep. Call Dell if you have any concerns.....