odd problem with racing fan

[Shankar Bhattacharyya]

A while ago I began to have an odd problem.

The computer is a Dell Dimension 7300 with a PIV at 2.6 Ghz, 2 GB of
Ram (not original Dell), a 40 GB serial ATA main drive with the OS, a
second serial ATA Drive of 500 GB capacity, usually an external 320GB
drive hooked up via USB, a CD-RW/DVD-R drive which came preinstalled,
a DVD-RW drive I added, on-board networking (disabled), and a USB
wireless card. Nothing else is significant and I suspect that none of
that is significant either.

I do download utilities off the net quite often but most of it is well
known shareware or freeware. I have installed some such software in
the last few months but the problem was not coincident with that sort
of thing.

I did have several persistent hard crashes, acompanied by the blue
screen of death, associated with a damaged Sonic file but chkdisk took
care of that and I have not had those crashes since.

I tend to leave my computer running continuously. Every now and then I
come back and find that the computer is making a considerable whirring
noise. The DVD RW drive is flashing away rather vigorously and is
presumably spinning away.There is no disk in the drive. The noise
appears to be coming principally from the fan, which seems to be
turning at much higher RPM than normal. I have not determined whether
the disk drives are racing as well. The computer is unresponsive. I
have to lean on the power button to shut it down. Just hitting the
power button does not accomplish anything. When I reboot the computer
everything runs fine. There is no obvious error message, no offers to
scan the disk, nothing telling me about crash-related core-dumps,
nothing from Windows. Firefox tells me that the last shutdown was
abnormal and asks whether it should restore the session or start over.
Neither choice appears to present problems.

I have come to suspect that this is happening when the computer goes
into standby but have not established this conclusively as yet. The
problem appears to be happening more often, possibly because I have
been setting my computer to go into standby after some specified
period of time. A standby-related issue would then occur more often
but again, that is speculation.

I would appreciate any diagnoses and solutions offered.

Thanks.

- Shankar

 

[Unknown]

How much free space on the main drive?

 

[Twayne]

A while ago I began to have an odd problem.

The computer is a Dell Dimension 7300 with a PIV at 2.6 Ghz, 2 GB of
Ram (not original Dell), a 40 GB serial ATA main drive with the OS, a
second serial ATA Drive of 500 GB capacity, usually an external 320GB
drive hooked up via USB, a CD-RW/DVD-R drive which came preinstalled,
a DVD-RW drive I added, on-board networking (disabled), and a USB
wireless card. Nothing else is significant and I suspect that none of
that is significant either.

I do download utilities off the net quite often but most of it is well
known shareware or freeware. I have installed some such software in
the last few months but the problem was not coincident with that sort
of thing.

Assuming you run updated periodic AV and spyware scans you're likely
fine. This doesn't sound like a virus, IMO.

I did have several persistent hard crashes, acompanied by the blue
screen of death, associated with a damaged Sonic file but chkdisk took
care of that and I have not had those crashes since.

Then it's irrelevant.

I tend to leave my computer running continuously. Every now and then I
come back and find that the computer is making a considerable whirring
noise. The DVD RW drive is flashing away rather vigorously and is
presumably spinning away.There is no disk in the drive. The noise
appears to be coming principally from the fan, which seems to be
turning at much higher RPM than normal. I have not determined whether
the disk drives are racing as well. The computer is unresponsive. I
have to lean on the power button to shut it down. Just hitting the
power button does not accomplish anything. When I reboot the computer
everything runs fine. There is no obvious error message, no offers to
scan the disk, nothing telling me about crash-related core-dumps,
nothing from Windows. Firefox tells me that the last shutdown was
abnormal and asks whether it should restore the session or start over.
Neither choice appears to present problems.

Hitting the power button is OK at that point most of the time. The
machine has usually shut down but just wasn't able to tell you so. The
fact that it takes the 5 seconds or whatever it is to shut down does
indicate that something is running or it would shut off immediately.
But that's what the 5S delay is for; so it can shut off cleanly, which
it sounds like it's doing.

I have come to suspect that this is happening when the computer goes
into standby but have not established this conclusively as yet. The
problem appears to be happening more often, possibly because I have
been setting my computer to go into standby after some specified
period of time. A standby-related issue would then occur more often
but again, that is speculation.

Since you mentioned fans, I would have a look inside to be certain that
ALL of the fans are operational. If one fan is crapped out, and you
have temp controlled fans, it could be one fan working to make up for
the loss of the other fan, which is letting temps inside climb more than
they should.
Do you have any temp sensors you can check? SIW, an XP Sytem Info
replacement will check your sensors and report their readings. Google
for SIW if you're interested.

Without seeing the machine, it sounds like a temperature issue offhand.

Clean out the dust & fuzz while you have the case open; if you're in
the heat and humidity like we have here, it can provide intermittant
problems fixable just by cleaning out the dust, etc.. Read up on static
control before you spend too much time inside the case though. Plastic
vacuum cleaner tools can hold a lot of static; don't actually touch
anything with them. Just because you don't see a spark doesn't mean
there wasn't one.

If the above doesn't help at all, try turning the machine off at night
and see if there is an ontime to when the problem may appear.
Personally I like Hibernate better than Standby because it actually
allows the machine to be powered down and as long as it's in hibernation
the fans will eventually stop working. With standby you still have
things running in the background; indexing, maybe defrag, AV, things
like that.

That's about all that comes to mind right now.

HTH

 

[Shankar Bhattacharyya]

How much free space on the main drive?

Drive properties in explorer reports 35 GB total, 9 GB and change free,
24 GB and change used. The drive has been defragmented recently.

A while ago I began to have an odd problem.
[...]
I tend to leave my computer running continuously. Every now and
then I come back and find that the computer is making a
considerable whirring noise. The DVD RW drive is flashing away
rather vigorously and is presumably spinning away.There is no disk
in the drive. The noise appears to be coming principally from the
fan, which seems to be turning at much higher RPM than normal. I
have not determined whether the disk drives are racing as well.

 

[Shankar Bhattacharyya]

Assuming you run updated periodic AV and spyware scans you're
likely fine. This doesn't sound like a virus, IMO.

I don't think it is a virus either. I run AVG free in its current
version. It is updated every day. It runs a full system scan almost
every night. Now, of ocurse, I am doing this by hand rather than
scheduled, since by the scheduled time the computer will have begun
misbehaving.

The fact that it takes the 5 seconds or whatever it is to shut down
does indicate that something is running or it would shut off
immediately. But that's what the 5S delay is for; so it can shut
off cleanly, which it sounds like it's doing.

I have begun to consider whether it is related to the DVD burner in
some way. The problem is, however, unrelated to whether or not I have
used the DVD drive, as far as I can tell.

Since you mentioned fans, I would have a look inside to be certain
that ALL of the fans are operational. If one fan is crapped out,
and you have temp controlled fans, it could be one fan working to
make up for the loss of the other fan, which is letting temps
inside climb more than they should.
Do you have any temp sensors you can check? SIW, an XP Sytem
Info
replacement will check your sensors and report their readings.
Google for SIW if you're interested.

Without seeing the machine, it sounds like a temperature issue
offhand.

I will try SIW. It looks like a good utility, more detailed than
Microsoft's own at first glance.

I had not thought about a temperature issue. However, I find this
confusing: if that is the case, why does this not happen when I am
using the computer? I do CPU and disk intensive stuff. This has never
happened while I am at the keyboard. However, a temperature issue as a
side effect is possible, I suppose. If a process does not stop but
some involved fan does stop as the computer goes into standby, there
could be heat buildup at the affected location. I think this calls for
a somewhat odd sitution but I already know the problem is odd.

If I deliberately set the computer into standby mode, the led on the
DVD burner flashes continuously but the fan does not race, based on a
very sample number of experiments. I will try that a few more times to
see what happens.

If the above doesn't help at all, try turning the machine off at
night and see if there is an ontime to when the problem may appear.

If I turn the computer off entirely the problem does not manifest
itself, as far as I can tell.

That's about all that comes to mind right now.

HTH

It certainly gives me something to consider and try. I will report
what happens.

Thanks for giving it some thought.

- Shankar

 

[Twayne]

....

I had not thought about a temperature issue. However, I find this
confusing: if that is the case, why does this not happen when I am
using the computer? I do CPU and disk intensive stuff. This has never
happened while I am at the keyboard. However, a temperature issue as a
side effect is possible, I suppose. If a process does not stop but
some involved fan does stop as the computer goes into standby, there
could be heat buildup at the affected location. I think this calls for
a somewhat odd sitution but I already know the problem is odd.

Hmm, check the fan blades themselves for gunk buildup too. Might's well
go over it good while you're at it. Do NOT remove the cpu fan!! Just
make sure it's running and pushing air. Else you could damage the heat
transfer to the heat sink; they're real picky.

I agree it's odd, but I've had a similar experience and it was an
ongoing one. Only in my case it was a failure to Restart if I turned
the machine off and then within a few minutes, say up to ten, decided to
turn it on again. There was a fan that, if the temps were high, was
supposed to keep working after ShutDown. But a broken control wire
stopped it from doing that. So, I'd turn the machine off, ALL fans
would stop, and residual heat from the components would cause the temp
inside the case to start climbing. Natch, the sensors, being basically
probes, sensed the temp so as soon as I started the machine again, the
sensors would say "too hot!" and it would refuse to boot. Give it
another twenty minutes, and everything was fine again. Yup, it was
during last summer, really hot, and the ac for this room was out(a
window unit).
I tore my hair out for quite awhile figuring that one out. The
broken wire, actually a case of crimped insulation, not really broken,
was found by accident and since then everything has been fine. But the
temp rise only happened when the computer was powered OFF so it took
awhile to realize what was going on.
Since then I've added an additional, more powerful fan to the case
and the internal temps dropped by almost 20 degrees C in that heat.
Once I got the ac running again it was even better but I left the

If I deliberately set the computer into standby mode, the led on the
DVD burner flashes continuously but the fan does not race, based on a
very sample number of experiments. I will try that a few more times to
see what happens.

That's really curious: Try unplugging the DVD drive and see if you can
get the symptoms to happen with it unplugged. I've never noticed DVD
lites flashing continuously during standby; maybe as the machine goes
into/out of standby, but not during. It should be ignored while it's in
standby. Assuming especailly there is no DVD in the drive, it shouldn't
be operating.
The temp sensors might show you something there if it has one.

Best of luck,

 

[Shankar Bhattacharyya]

Hmm, check the fan blades themselves for gunk buildup too. Might's
well go over it good while you're at it. Do NOT remove the cpu
fan!! Just make sure it's running and pushing air. Else you could
damage the heat transfer to the heat sink; they're real picky.

I have not yet popped the covers for this but will in the near term.

That's really curious: Try unplugging the DVD drive and see if you
can get the symptoms to happen with it unplugged. I've never
noticed DVD lites flashing continuously during standby; maybe as
the machine goes into/out of standby, but not during. It should be
ignored while it's in standby. Assuming especailly there is no DVD
in the drive, it shouldn't be operating.

My next experiment will be to do exactly that: disconnect the DVD
drive to see what happens. I am beginning to wonder if this is a
function of the drive misbehaving, in fact as the computer goes into
standby. As such, it does not seem to do anything unusual the rest of
the time. Right now it is inactive. No noise, no lights, probably just
waiting for me to go off for a bit. On the other hand, if on entering
standby something happens which keeps the drive from spinning but lets
it draw power, the motor could heat up quite a bit.

The temp sensors might show you something there if it has one.

I installed SIW. The only sensors my computer seems to have are the
ones in the hard disks. A Hitachi 500 GB drive is running at 59 C and
a WD 40 GB drive is running at 50 or 51 C. That seems high to me but I
have never given any thought to the temperature the drives run at. The
WD ran hotter earlier, probably refleting a full chkdsk I ran.

I have also found that if if I put the system in hibernate mode it
powers down completely, without any obvious signs of waking up and
spinning the fan. No lights, no noise. That was a single experiment
and I don't think the result is surprising.

I also set the computer in standby and waited to see what happened.
The led on the DVD drive flashed away but the drive did not seem to be
doing much else for at least some reasonable period. The fan did not
race. Eventually I wandered out and when I came back the fan was
racing with the loud whirring sound I have described. Usually I have
set the computer in standby and walked away, so the quality of
experimental observation was not as complete.

- Shankar