Fan goes crazy when idle

So one of two things will happen:

1- I put my computer on Sleep and when I come back, it's up and running and the fan is going crazy
2- I leave my computer unattended for a few minutes with some light programs (e.g. Firefox) open and when I come back the fan is going crazy


My guess is that it's a program that's running in the background that uses up resources when it sees that the computer isn't in use. So whenever this happens, I quickly open up Task Manager to see what program is causing this, but don't see anything out of the ordinary.

Any tips / suggestions / things I might try? Thanks in advance. (Btw, I'm running W7 x64 Pro on a Dell Studio XPS 16.)

 

Have you been checking temperatures of both the GPU and CPU at these times?

 

What ever it is, it probably stops as soon as there is activity, so you dont get to see it using any CPU. Try leaving it with task manager open, and sort it so the processes with max cpu usage is on top.

 

I would suggest you to check your vents. and temps.

 

download HW Monitor and post the results.
when was the last time you cleaned the fans out?

 

So you know how when you want to show somebody that something is broken, it starts working again? Yeah... that's why it's taking me a while to answer.

I'll get some screenshots of Task Manager and HWMonitor as soon as I can, and put them up.



@ MrDJ, it's been about a month since I last cleaned my fans.

 

that should be fine with the fans then. its recommended every 3-6 months.

dont you just hate that when something goes wrong and then when you call someone to look its fine,happenned many a time

 

I saw the same thing with my computer. It's Windows auto indexing searching your hard drive. There are some tips about reducing what all gets searched to cut down on the load. It never seemed to cause me any issues but I sure hated to listen to it.

As for the waking from sleep, my best guess is auto update. I'm not entirely sure but I have the same issue and rather hate it. When I put my computer in sleep mode I expect it to stay there.

 

@Regnad:
Yes! That makes sense. As long as it's something legit I don't care.
It's just that a while back there was this whole thing with Digsby (IM program) using people's computers for some research or whatever without their knowledge, and I was worried it might be something like that.


I'll keep trying to get those HWMonitor screenshots though, just to make sure... no luck so far.

 

Try go to task scheduler and look around.. See if there's anything set to wake pc from standby and execute some actions..

Also, go to power options and enter the advanced settings of whatever powerplan you use, expand 'Sleep' and disable the wake timers... Worth a try.

 

I took a look and changed the wake timer settings. Thanks!

 

Yes! Thank you! This definitely seems to be the most likely cause.

I had some weird 5:42am wakeup times, which explains why I would find my computer on in the morning.

Too early to tell yet, but this seems like it might solve my problem.

 

I hope it does, good luck.