Inspiron 1720 Fan stopped working/sound issue

I have an Inspiron 1720 laptop. It will be 2 years old this coming Christmas...and I ain't got the extended warranty so no go on sending this thing back to dell.

Recently within the past week or so the 1 and only fan has stopped working on it. Once I found out it stopped working I went and download SpeedFan to check on my temps and they was pretty high it showed the above normal arrow and sometimes even the flame icon next to the temps. So I have not been using my laptop since. I tried taking this thing apart but I have had no luck. I'm not very experienced in working on laptops.

~~UPDATE~~
My fan is working now. I don't know if I jumped to conclusions whenever my fan wouldn't turn on after a good 20 mins or so of just web surfing. So I decided to just hop on a game and play. Then there it was not even 5 mins into playing the fan kicked in and starting pushing out hot air very nicely, but I did look at the temps on SpeedFan and during gameplay my GPU would reach 140F and CPU would get at like 130-135F. My idle temps are still high in my opinion. The GPU idles in these ranges 125-130F and CPU at 100-110F. Is these temps normal?
~~UPDATE~~

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The thing with the sound issue is whenever I crank the volume up when like listening to a song or watching a movie or just gaming and the sound will get intense and the laptops sound will just sit there and loop and loop and loop also putting the laptop in a freeze/lock/hang state and its non usable. I can either wait it out and it will eventually come back to a normal state if I spam the volume down button or press mute or I can just power off by holding my power button down.

Specs on laptop:
Dell Inspiron 1720
Windows XP Pro SP3
Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 2.00GHz
2GB DDR2 RAM
nVidia GeForce 8400M GS
A09 BIOS from Dell
SigmaTel High Definition Audio
1390 WLAN Mini-Card
Conexant HDA D330 MDC V.92 Modem

If there's anything else you need I will reply back asap.

 

Those are all very normal temperatures. In fact, Your 8400M GS at 54*C high is a blessing. Most 8400M GS users of other machines hit about 70 - 90*C on gaming. It's normal for the vent at the left to feel hot; this shows that the fan is doing a good job expelling all heat effectively. Oh and please, don't use Farenheit temps, would be nice if you use Degree Celcius as it's pretty much the standard measurement over here.

The BIOS controls how and when, the fan will kick in and to what temperature. The 1720 fans will kick in when it reaches 60*C; its quite general for most notebooks.

If you ask me, don't worry about the temperatures on the 1720; it's well known for its efficient cooling capabilities. I rarely heard of anyone's 1720 overheating; and most cases of the 1720 overheating are dust problems. Not to mention the 1720 is not under Dell's list of laptops consisting of defective G84 failing cards. The general idling temperatures for most GPUs are in the late 40s, mid 50s and early 60s, averaging in the 50s. And likewise, gaming temperatures would be in the mid 60s all the way to the mid 80s.

The 1720 hitting 60*C + max on gaming is considered excellent.

Since you have tried taking this thing apart, have you tried cleaning the fans for dust? I would also suggest reapplying thermal paste like AS5 or MX2 for better cooling efficiencies which is in direct contact with the heatsink and core.

For your sound problem you may want to try reseating the sound cables in your 1720. My 1720 (see sig) is about a year and a half, and so far it's running smoothly. You may also try connecting an external speaker to see if it happens the same way it does.

EDIT: And never use Speedfan to check your temperaures; use HWMonitor instead for accurate reading.

 

That's good to hear that those are normal temps. I guess the temp of my laptop never reached 60 c whenever I came to the conclusion the fan had quit on me.

I didn't get the thing apart all the way I couldn't even get inside to look at anything I was too scared of breaking something since it's not under warranty and all so I have not been in the guts of it, but from what I seen through the vents and all I didn't see any dust really. Only time I use my laptop is when I take it with me somewhere outside my house cause I just use my desktop here so I guess it doesn't collect as much dust and when its not being use I keep it zipped up in my pretty little case logic...case.

About my sound. I hook a pair of external speakers up and crank my computer volume up and it does just perfectly fine so I don't know what it could possibly be. I know I searched and poked around on the dell forums and found out there was many other people having the exact same problem as I was. They have guides on how to SEMI-fix it.

Can I ask you if your 1720 ever had this sound issue?

Also, I had Linux Ubuntu on my 1720 awhile back and it fixed my little sound issue I could crank that baby all the way up and it wouldn't lock up, freeze, or loop or cause any bog to the cpu. I'm thinking it might possibly be a driver issue?

I appreciate the knowledge about the 1720's. Now I don't have to worry about my laptop melting hah.

EDIT: Just thought of that tool HWMonitor. I will go DL and check that out on my laptop tomorrow and i'll post back some readings and do a few more tests to get a more accurate reading.

 

Ok, finally here are those temps with that monitor tool you told me to get HWMonitor.



I put text on to describe and all that. Don't laugh at the pic haha.

I measured these temps with my laptop sitting on my computer desk with no cooling pad, I have still yet to buy one of those and I would think it would make a huge difference. Are my temps still looking good and normal?

 

They are fine

 

Calling SomeFormOFhuman

I replaced my HDD with an OCZ 60GB SSD today, the fan is not working, ran the DELL diagnostic disk which confirms fan RPM = 0, also temperature out of range!

What do I do? Is is run by one of the DELL drivers as I haven't got around to doing quite everything yet, e.g. my new 2nd drive is a Hitachi HDD and it is not yet recognized by the system? another driver or perhaps a setting?

Thanks, John

PS - running Windows 7 64 bit now also, this is from another netbook however, so I have communications

 

Wow, after replying your PM I now then took notice of your post, and the other replies that came after mine in this thread... Anyway, so you ran the Dell diagnostics and it detected a fan error? And what kind of temperatures are you getting? Are you able to boot into your system?

 

Many thanks for the quick replies here and by PM. Yes, I can boot OK, but have it shutdown to cool off for now and it is also family dinner time here in Australia

Yes, diagnostic said 0 RPM, I had noticed it was a bit slow, then I felt the bottom was very hot and there was no hot air flow from the left side as usual.

I had already shut it down for awhile by the time I found the HWMonitor program using this netbook, so from memory, I saw temperatures around 38 C.

What I found curious was that the 2nd drive, the HDD, displayed but not the SDD?

More later, John

 

Definately not working, not sure why HDD swap brought this on, guess I can put the old disk in tomorrow to check, guess I better order a replacement from eBay ASAP. Now at 123 C. shutting it down
[/IMG]

 

Is your SSD displayed as C drive in your My Computer window? Have you did the instructions I gave formatting the drive?

And to be frank these temperatures are really normal temperatures.

You may want to try i8Kfan to make the fans run at full speed to check if the fan really runs.

Download I8Kfan from here:
http://www.acaeum.com/images/I8kfanGUI64.zip

Extract it into a folder say probably your C: program files directory. Do not run it as yet or it'll not work.

Then, download the driver signature enforcement tool. Make sure you have UAC disabled so that the fan control feature can work.
http://www.ngohq.com/home.php?page=dseo

Run the enforcement tool and choose test mode. Restart your PC and run faninst.exe in the drivers folder inside of where you placed your i8kfan folder. Select install driver and click install.

Run i8kfan and select Force fans to high speed. Make sure your AC adapter is plugged in and run HWMonitor to see if there is a further drop of temperature. Then if you may, put your ears on the bottom of the fan, you should hear the fan whirring and the air coming out from the left side of the vent. If you these two signs don't comply, then bingo, your fan is dead.

Write back to me. Thanks.

 

Hi,

just noticed that the photo shows a "Standard VGA adapter" instead of the real VGA that is installed. Missing or corrupt drivers perhaps? Such can influence the thermal management negatively, so that should be fixed also.

Michael

 

Yes, thanks, just installed a SSD and Windows 7 at the same time - this is when I noticed the problem, pobably no connection? Got the graphics driver but still HOT as no FAN
[/IMG]

 

Thanks, I did all that, still no sign of life and temperatures go up as per the image in the last post. Guess I need to get real busy on Ebay and make purchase soon, thanks for all the help guys, will let you know how it goes

 

UPDATE: OK, got the new fan in, (found plenty of dust and 2 hairballs in there ) ran the I8Kfan program as per instructions, plenty of air flow and fan noise now......... however, when I stop that program, nothing is happening???

- does the DELL internal system kick the fan on when it gets to a certain temperature?

- should I un-install the I8Kfan program, or what settings can I leave it on?

Many thanks, John [/IMG]

 

Are these temperatures with i8Kfan turned on? They seem really cool. Try to turn the i8k fan off and check the temperatures. But judging from what I see, it seems to run really fine.

 

Yes, this is shortly after I had booted up after replacing the fan, and had run I8K, so that is why it is still cool.

It is running around 55 to 58 C now, I can hear the fan if I pick it up and hold near my ear, and every so often it kicks into hyper drive and I can hear it no problem, all fixed now, and running great, first time I took any laptop apart so sure appreciate all the help from this forum, THANK YOU ALL