Studio xps 8100 fan speed

Reboot and press F12 before Windows starts to load. Go to Utilities partition and run fan tests to see if BIOS sees fan correctly.

Possible you will have to remove heat sink, clean both surfaces and apply fresh thermal paste and reinstall heat sink.

Thanks for the reply. The option was there but it says "No Diagnostic Utility partition identified press any key to reboot."  Now I did upgrade to a larger hard drive several months ago. When I cloned the old drive to the new drive maybe it didn't clone properly. I did clone all partitions.  I don't believe the new drive is the problem though as I changed drives several months ago and this problem just started. What I will try is putting the original drive back in and I will try your suggestion on it. Thanks for the advise and I will post the results when I'm done.

If you have the Dell Resources disk, boot from that disk to run the diagnostics without having to swap the drives.

And if you decide to clear BIOS, copy down all the current settings first (reboot and press F2 to open BIOS setup). And when you reboot after clearing BIOS, open BIOS setup again and make sure all the settings match what you wrote down or change to match. And be sure to save any changes before exiting BIOS setup.

If none of that helps, you might also look for an updated video driver for your hardware and install that because video drivers affect CPU fan speeds and if that driver got corrupted...

I changed the battery and it didn't make any difference. At least I have a new battery now. When I booted with f12 there was a diagnostic option. I ran this and it took about 30 minutes and everything passed. I then booted with a utility disk that came from dell. This also had a hardware diagnostic option on it. I ran it and it says the cpu fan is fine. I did order some heatsink paste and will try some new paste when it comes in. The only other thing I can think of is I had to change my video card awhile ago and it was near the max for my power supply. I have been using the new video card for awhile though and this fan problem only recently started. I can't see this as a power supply problem but you never know. Nothing surprises me anymore.

I'm wondering why speedfan doesn't give me the option to control my fans. Is this because of the motherboard I have or is there a problem with the motherboard that isn't letting speedfan control them?

Also I assume core0 to 3 is my cpu and when I chart their temp with speedfan they are also spiking up and down. It is possible the fan is working as its supposed to and reving up with the temp spikes in which case I need to know why my cpu temp started to spike up and down.

How strange is this, my XPS 8100 starting doing the very same thing.

I'm trying to find out if I should replace the CPU fan though, not sure what 1 to get as I don't know what will fit in the system (some what of a novice)

I tried the fan from my wifes computer and it did the same thing.  Anyway I just purchased a faster chip off ebay. I could use the upgrade anyway so got a i-7. If this cures the problem I will let you know. Probably be a week to get it I would guess.

I have a studio xps 8000 for 5 years,  with the exact symptoms that started a week ago.   The fan speed constantly varies from 300-3200 regardless of CPU temperature.   No recent hardware changes & I cleaned the heatsink as well.   I'm getting some heatsink compound today to see if that helps.   HWMonitor shows a TMPIN2 of -56 deg C.  Not sure if that's a valid reading or causing the problem.   How does that compare to yours?

No fan speed control utility works with most Dell laptops. The newest one I was able to control is an E1705, about 8 years old! My XPS 1530 is  one year younger, and doesn't respond. This is because Dell implements fan control differently than most others. These programs will read the temperatures and sometimes the fan speed, but that's all.

My fan also varies from around 300 to 3200. My cpu is running between 30 and 40 and spiking up to 50 or 60 then back down, I have a used cpu and paste coming and will see if that fixes it. I got the cpu off ebay for a good price and figured I could use the upgrade anyway.

That is not a valid reading. Means the program IS NOT reading your temperature. Try Open Hardware Monitor. Reads all temperatures and some fan speeds.

Two other new threads with same kind of fan issue, here and here.

Coincidence or...??

If this started happening last week to several of you, I'm wondering if one of the Windows updates did something to cause this... ??

I'm not suggesting you uninstall MS updates, but I would update the video card driver first and if that doesn't help update the chipset driver.

I've used SpeedFan for eons. It can't control Dell desktop fans because there's a sensor in the fan that's read by BIOS to control the fan. And if you install a non-Dell fan you're going to get a fan failure error at every boot.

SpeedFan has a checkbox to enable a plug-in to control fans on Dell laptops, but he clearly warns you to use it at your own risk.