XPS 15 fan, on/off/on/off, gahhh!!!

I turned off some gadgets and fan is "ok"...strange....

Have you tried the new A05 BIOS, the problem solved with this?

When I bought my XPS A05 bios was on it...

Here are improvements A04 to A05:

Fixes/Enhancements:

1. Updated Intel microcode.

2. Fixed issue of battery information(capacity in Watts) does not report correctly in Dell Support Center.

hey fellas, i just recieved my xps 15 2 days ago and noticed this problem rather quicky....i'm fairly happy that the sleep trick "works"....THANK GOD i found this. does in work in other power plans? or just power saver?  thanks

the "sleep trick" works in any power mode, about 90% of the time.  And like I said before, opening a program that uses the NVIDIA card will stop the bug as well, again about 90% of the time.

@Pyxster The close the lid trick is not working for me, in any power plan.

Hmmm, I'm not sure what is up.  My laptop actually only does the fan thing about once a week now, I'm not sure if it's because most of the time I'm running 3D apps or Photoshop, or the updates I have or the power plan settings.

In my advanced power settings, for power saver I have the following settings:

Sleep > Allow hybrid sleep is Off  (for both battery and plugged in)

Intel Graphics > Max Battery Life  (for both battery and plugged in)

Processor power management >

-Minimum state 5% (for both battery and plugged in)

-System cooing Passive  (for both battery and plugged in)

-Max state 25% (for both battery and plugged in)

I crank everything up for the Dell setting, and switch to that if I'm doing anything demanding.

My XPS 15 has the 2720QM Processor and 2GB NVIDIA 540M video, so perhaps those drivers have something to do with it vs the drivers for the other graphics card, or cooling of the other processors?

I changed the parameters to what your indicating Pyxster. The only parameter that was not correct was the max state that i had at 100%.

The bad news is the close lid trick is still not working :/

Im sending the machine in to support in a few days, i will update this thread whit the result when it comes back in a week or two...

Here are a couple of facts after taking to Dell Support

1. The Dell XPS L502X has been out for only a month now.

2. Dell is not officially aware of any fan problem.

3. Dell can not comment on any of the threads related to the fan noise

4. The latest XPS L502X bios is A05.

5. The Nvidia driver for the graphics card is 270.61 - April 18, 2011, there is one more non beta: 275. 33 but it did not load sucessfully

There are all kinds of suggestions and solutions, essentially, "try this try that" but no official solution.  Its very confusing all these trial and error attempts to right the issue.  For a brand new product, the user should not have to go through such an inconvenience,.  The XPS is an awesome machine with a tremendous amount of power and I look forward to a unified solution to this issue.  

PS: I have tried all of the afore mentions solutions and I thank all you greatly for you input; however, the results of quieting down the fan are mixed at best.

Unless you explicitly downloaded and installed speedfan, gpu-z, etc, you won't have them on your system and won't need to uninstall them.  The NVidia utilities can all be uninstalled as part of the installation process (I believe).  

To directly uninstall, you can go to the Control Panel --> Uninstall or change a program

In the top right of the window is a search box.  Search for "nvidia"  Uninstall everything you find.

The latest NVIDIA driver can be found on the NVIDIA website (not dell!) here:

www.nvidia.com/.../notebook-win7-winvista-64bit-275.33-whql-driver.html

If it give the option to  uninstall first, I suggest you do that.

Good luck!

Frank.

I have had this issue in the past.  Now days, I don't notice it at all.  I'm not sure if this is because I've become less sensitive to it compared to when I bought the computer two months ago.

I did notice a significant drop in the occurrence once I moved to the beta NVIDIA spec drivers - as lamer01 discussed earlier in this thread.  Many thanks to lamer01 for making me go ahead and try the beta drivers.

I'm happy to report that this is no longer an issue for me.  

Do you recall which specific NVIDIA driver you installed?  Also,  I did not see an application to uninstall all the following that lamer01 mentioned below , especially the NVIDIA system tools.  Do you have a step-by-step for uninstalling these items mentioned below?

" Uninstall ALLL GPU and Fan related tools like NVidia System Tools, GPU-Z, NVidia Inspector, speedfan, etc."

So ok. I finally got it right.

Basically i followed lamer01 guide. AS in this post -> http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/p/19371524/19866336.aspx#19866336

The driver he talk about is found here -> http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/p/19371524/19866848.aspx#19866848 and is the one i have installed 

Optimus for those that are noobish as myself is the program for nvidia config. Called NVIDIA Kontrollpanel

Then i fixed the power settings as Pyxter suggest in this post -> http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/p/19371524/19898747.aspx#19898747

These step i had taken before, what is new is: remove all gadget that has something to do with cpu monitoring, graphics card monitor or to do with fan speed control and such. Note. I did not have any of those gadget displaying on my screen, but they where installed.

After uninstalling gadgets for cpu meter, gpu temp , cpu monitor, i chose the "power saver" power plan.

Rebooted

Resulting in my fan is slowly and almost noiseless pushing out some no to hot air. No buzzing on and off.

If i start a program the fan activates to jobs a bit harder falling to calm after one minute or so.

I think the return policy is 14 or 21 days, you have to pay to ship it back though..  not sure, I'm sure you can find that info on the main site.

I don't have the issues, maybe once every couple weeks.  it's probably how I use mine or something, not sure.  it still needs to be fixed though.