XPS 8100 cyclic whirring sound problem

same problem since a few days on my Inspiron :-(

Sounds like a sound loop. Mouse is freezing also

Could be CPU/GPU/PSU fan failure or any combination thereof. Hard drives spin at much higher revs. They don't whurr they whine and they don't last long.

Is there a possibility to check this ?

looks like I found the troubleshooter...

After installing the tool "process lasso" I found out that after each freeze the process DellDataVault.exe becomes activ.

After killing the corresponding tasks no freezes anymore.

problem is that I found no hint for de-installation up to now.

at least I´ve deactivated the 2 corresponding services...

I have the same problem with my 8100 and am trying to find a fix.

I opened the case and have discovered that the sound is coming from the heatsink and fan over the processor. It begins to make that noise only if I play a game, even a simple one like Candy Crush or Scrabble on FB. I think something is overheating when the graphics are involved. If I restart the computer, the fan no longer fluctuates and I don't hear that sound.

After several tests I noted that when just using the computer just to surf or use word or excel, the computer runs normally, the fan does not flucauate in speed and there is no sound cyclic whirring sound at all. Using the computer this way, I discovered that when I rt click on the  taskbar/show task manager/performance -cpu performance  runs from 1% to 13% and there is no noise.

But once I start playing a game the sound of the fan begins and cpu performance check runs from 15% to 35%. 

The problem begins for me when anything using flash or something with graphics.

I downloaded speedfan to try and see if the processor is overheating, but I don't understand the results. 

I noticed that someone used process lasso and would like to try that too, but first, if someone could explain what I am looking at with speed fan, I would appreciate it. 

I am now loath to play any game in fear of damaging the hard drive and losing everything. 

Maybe it's just some setting we have to fix.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer,

Jane

It's normal for the fan to speed up under heavy load, such as gaming. 

An option is to replace the heatsink with a larger one (and a correspondingly larger fan). 

Thanks and I would think so, but then why does the fan continue to fluctuate after the games are over? And is a game like Scrabble or Candy Crush considered heavy gaming? 

I've had this computer for quite awhile and it never happened before.

Just really want to understand what;s occurring...

Jane

SOLVED! I remembered the problem started on Feb 12th. I restored the system to Feb 11 and have had no problems this entire day. I think it was one of the windows updates. I'm going to install them one by one and see if I can find the culprit. Hopefully, it's something that is non-critical.

Jane

Hooray!!! I fell back to the previous M/S Windows 7 restore point and the problem disappeared.

I then set the auto update feature to advise me when updates were available but do not install them. My plan was to work thru the updates until I found the bad one. 

Now it gets weird, the next time I logged on, the Auto update function went ahead anyway and installed all the updates I had just removed when I fell back to an earlier restore point and guess what, the problem did not appear again. 

It appears that something got corrupted in the first download of updates that did not get corrupted the 2nd time.

Ah the mysteries of Windows......

Need to uninstall Dell Datasafe or Data Vault if installed on your system.  I removed mine (I had Datasafe on there) then restarted the PC and the cyclic whirring that was driving me crazy had gone away and has not returned.

If you have Dell Support Assistant installed then make sure you go into it and untick the options for automatic downloads or Datasafe/Data Vault will re-install and the problem will return.

Good luck.