# Dell Inspiron 1501 fan malfunctioning



## Terin (Dec 10, 2008)

Long story short - My Dell Inspiron 1501's fan doesn't work. It spins up on boot up, but then stops and doesn't spin again, up to the point of overheating and shutting down.

Long story long - I swapped out a 160GB external hard drive with my 60GB internal one, after I figured out how to get it out of it's casing. I lost my Dell CDs long ago, so the only choice was to reinstall the OS on the new hard drive, which worked out before when I downgraded from Vista to XP. After putting in the new hard drive, installing XP again, installing new drivers, and reinstalling some old programs, everything seemed to work out. I use my laptop pathetically for gaming, and about a day or two after the installation, within about 20 minutes of gaming, the FPS would drop significantly. I used CPU-Z and RMClock to figure out that the clock multiplier would get stuck at x4, resulting in a speedy 800MHz, no matter how much I loaded the CPU. 

RMClock allowed me to get it out of this stupor with a little success, but after about two days of doing this, the computer started to shut down after it being on for a bit. Using the same magical programs, the CPU was running at the full 2.0GHz, in complete contrast to the previous issue. On top of that, the fan was not working at all, except on boot-up. This combination of quickly generating heat and no cooling made it so that it was pretty much impossible to have the laptop running for more than 20 minutes. I got lucky and was able to find power scheme in the control panel, and changing it from Portable/Laptop to Minimal Power Management ironically re-enabled the CPU to scale dynamically, from 800MHz to 1.6GHz to a full 2.0GHz. So now the problem is the fan. I currently have to put a desk fan behind the laptop in order to cool it.

Here are some things I've tried -

1. Updated the BIOS from 1.70 to 2.63. Changed nothing.
2. Tried to use SpeedFan to force the fans on. Does nothing. I even saw a suggestion to enable the Dell support check, and have it start up with the OS. However, there's an error "DELL Support Enabling has been disabled because SYSTEM CALLS were unsuccessful"
3. Using Christian Diefer's Fan Control. This outright fails, as it can't detect any temperatures or any sensors at all, even though SpeedFan and RMClock can.
4. Reinstalling the drivers. Mostly, I tried reinstalling the CPU driver. While I was having the 2.0GHz locked clock issues, I did that, at sometimes, it re-enabled the fans at a low speed. It wasn't enough for the full 2.0GHz, and now, no matter how many times I reinstall, nothing has changed.
5. Going back to the old hard drive. No change there, either.

With this situation, I can only do some online work, as it's very uncomfortable and cumbersome to have the fan set up all the time.  If anyone could shed some light on this situation, it would be a huge help to get me back to full-use of my laptop.


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## Terin (Dec 12, 2008)

Right, I need to give this a bump, seeing as it's my only computer, and it's barely functional.


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## Terin (Dec 13, 2008)

And another...


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## erocker (Dec 13, 2008)

Have you gone into the bios to make sure that the settings for the fan and processor thermal management are setup correctly?  Do you think that perhaps the fan is just failing?


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## crazy pyro (Dec 13, 2008)

Try buying a new CPU heatsink/ fan for it, this should fix it. Some Dickhead decided to stick a pen into my Laptop through the cooling port and managed to dislodge my motherboard and a new CPU fan fixed the temp problems (although it never could boot stably after the mobo being dislodged, actually from what I remember I had the same problem but with an intel celeron instead.


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## Terin (Dec 13, 2008)

Laptop BIOS never seem to have any options worth anything in them, and my laptop is no exception. There are only options to change the time and enable or disable USB ports.

Like I said, the fan spins up on boot, but then doesn't after that. The fan isn't completely broken in that case, so there's some kind of error in telling the fan it needs to run when the computer heats up.


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## websta (Dec 27, 2008)

I have the same problem with the same model laptop so I have bookmarked this thread.  I wish I could offer a solution but at least you know others are in the same boat.  

Thanks,

websta


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## Terin (Dec 27, 2008)

Oh, I fixed the fan not spinning by reinstalling windows. Simple as that.


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## websta (Dec 27, 2008)

10-4 thanks for the update - I'll give it a whirl

websta


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