cpu and rear cooling fans shut off when WinXP boots

B

Brad

I was upgrading my memory from 256megs to 1gig of ram. After swapping the
ram sticks I rebooted as I always do to make sure everything goes fine with
the case cover off. I noticed as soon as the WinXP splash screen comes up
the cooling fans stop. As soon as I shut down when WinXP shuts down, just
before the power off, the fans kick back on for a second. I reinstalled the
old ram, same thing. I unplugged everything but the video and HDD and still
the same thing. Is there anything in WinXP that would control those fans? At
one point I forced a shut down and when the "safe mode", etc screen popped
up I chose the "Last known good config". After that the pc booted and the
fans worked until the next full reboot and now they quit again while WinXP
is running. I'm puzzled. Brad
 
B

Brad

I have since reinstalled the WinXP operating system. Even on first reboot
after reload, when the WinXP splash screen came up the fans stopped. The
power supply fan continues to run all the time. I even "defaulted" the bios
settings thinking something there was changed. That hasn't helped.
Brad
 
J

JS

Sounds like you have a problem with the new memory.
1) Try running Memtest86+, this runs from a boot disk and should eliminate
or
confirm if your new ram is bad or does not meet specification for your PC.
See: http://www.memtest.org/
Let it run for as long as you can, 2,4,6,8 or more hours, if no errors by
then your ram is OK.
If there are errors reported when running MemTest then go to step #2

2) Remove the new and install the original memory, does you PC now work OK.
If the PC runs OK go to step #3.

3) Try running the Crucial Memory Advisor tool: http://www.crucial.com/
This should tell you what memory will work for your PC, return the new
memory you just purchased.

JS
 
B

Brad

The Pc is an IBM Netvista 8313-53U, Intel Celeron 1.7g cpu, now has 1 gig
mem and new 40gig HDD (seagate).
It has an IBM mobo and standard power supply that came with it.
I'm thinking it might only run the fan when needed. As I'm running
(installing) all critical updates and SP2 the fan comes on and off. I had
never seen a cpu fan do that before plus I thought it strange to startup and
run when the Pc is first started but stops when WinXP starts or if it's off,
the fans start when WinXP stops (shuts down).
Thanks for your input. It would be nice to find documentation to support
that idea though.

I have a couple of more machines (duplicates to this) I have to update. I
will pay closer attention to those fans when I do them (couple of days).
 
J

Jeff Barnett

Brad said:
I was upgrading my memory from 256megs to 1gig of ram. After swapping the
ram sticks I rebooted as I always do to make sure everything goes fine with
the case cover off. I noticed as soon as the WinXP splash screen comes up
the cooling fans stop. As soon as I shut down when WinXP shuts down, just
before the power off, the fans kick back on for a second. I reinstalled the
old ram, same thing. I unplugged everything but the video and HDD and still
the same thing. Is there anything in WinXP that would control those fans? At
one point I forced a shut down and when the "safe mode", etc screen popped
up I chose the "Last known good config". After that the pc booted and the
fans worked until the next full reboot and now they quit again while WinXP
is running. I'm puzzled. Brad
Click to expand...
Some Intel motherboards have a setting "Slowest fan speed" with choices:
off or slow. If, when you installed the memory you somehow set "off",
then the fans would shut down unless something exceeded a temperature
threshold. Further, the current version of the power management spec
(ACPI) make the OS (not the BIOS) responsible for fan control. When the
machine state transitions from BIOS to OS control or OS to BIOS control,
fan management shifts also. It's possible that the driver thermal driver
installed as part of the motherboard drivers was mucked. By the, the
Plug & Play OS option in the BIOS should be set to "No" when you are
running XP.

-- Jeff Barnett
 
J

JohnO

The fans in this system may turn off under normal operation. This is a
noise-level reduction feature, and should not be taken to mean there is
something wrong with the system.
Click to expand...
[/QUOTE]

Question is...do they turn back on when necessary?

I've got one of those Intel mobos Jeff mentions, in a test system. Both the
CPU and case fan(s) run only as fast as necessary, typically less than a
third of full speed. I've not seen them go completely off, and this is
something I've watched carefully over the last couple months. This is a
great feature, the machine runs quietly and won't suck in as much dust over
the long haul.

Wild guess...but maybe SP-2 adds something (ACPI update?) that allows it to
control those fans. Before XP launches and after it's fully closed, the fans
fall back to full-speed defaults.

The Intel mobos have a utility that allows you to monitor the CPU and case
temps. If such a thing is available for your system, it might help reveal
what's going on.

-John O
 
S

SingaporeWebDesign

Hello,

Well there's always SpeedFan, but whether it works or not is another issue.
Worth a shot though
http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

--
Singapore Website Design
http://www.bootstrike.com/Webdesign/
Singapore Web Hosting
http://www.bootstrike.com/WinXP/faq.html
Windows XP FAQ

JohnO said:
The fans in this system may turn off under normal operation. This is a
noise-level reduction feature, and should not be taken to mean there is
something wrong with the system.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

Question is...do they turn back on when necessary?

I've got one of those Intel mobos Jeff mentions, in a test system. Both
the CPU and case fan(s) run only as fast as necessary, typically less than
a third of full speed. I've not seen them go completely off, and this is
something I've watched carefully over the last couple months. This is a
great feature, the machine runs quietly and won't suck in as much dust
over the long haul.

Wild guess...but maybe SP-2 adds something (ACPI update?) that allows it
to control those fans. Before XP launches and after it's fully closed, the
fans fall back to full-speed defaults.

The Intel mobos have a utility that allows you to monitor the CPU and case
temps. If such a thing is available for your system, it might help reveal
what's going on.

-John O
[/QUOTE]
 
S

SingaporeWebDesign

Hello,

As mentioned in my earlier reply, it is a feature of the system.

From
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-42835
[quote page 26]
The fans in this system may turn off under normal operation. This is a
noise-level reduction feature, and should not be taken to mean there is
something wrong with the system.

[/quote]

--
Singapore Website Design
http://www.bootstrike.com/Webdesign/
Singapore Web Hosting
http://www.bootstrike.com/WinXP/faq.html
Windows XP FAQ
 
B

Brad

Thanks guys for your input.
This machine (IBM) doesn't turn the fans "on" until needed by the cpu. This
is the first time I've come across a system that does that. I'm used to the
cpu fan running all the time at a slow speed then increased for more cooling
when needed.

I was concerned that I had some serious issues. I even contacted the people
we got the Pc's from and they weren't sure.

Thanks Again,
Brad
 

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