Thermal Shutdown

MengoNumber1,

Thanks for using the Dell Community Forums.

Here are some steps that may help resolve the thermal shutdown issue.

Clear the system event log.

Power the system up.
Press the < F2> key to enter System Setup.
Highlight System Event Log and press the < Enter > key.
Highlight Clear System Event Log and press the < Enter > key.
Press the < Esc > key twice to restart.

Uninstall then reinstall Dell OMC, Dell DMI, or Dell Inspector.

Click Start, then click Settings, click Control Panel and select Add/Remove Programs.
Scroll through the list of installed applications and locate Dell OMC, Dell DMI, or Dell Inspector.
Double-click Dell OMC, Dell DMI, or Dell Inspector.
When prompted, click to select remove.
Restart the system.

Uninstall the Dell Thermal Shutdown Utility.

Unload the Dell Thermal Shutdown utility by using the Dell Utility Diskette and running Remove.exe.

Check to see if the airflow into the computer is blocked. Blocked case apertures, or placing the system in an enclosed area can cause the system to overheat.

Unplug the external power cord from the back of the system.
Wait 5 seconds for flea power to drain.
Open the chassis.
Remove the heatsink.
Reseat the processor.
Reseat the VRM, if applicable.
Reinstall the heatsink.
Reattach the external power cord to the back of the system.
Power on the system.

Respectfully,

Just wondering if any of the above worked for anybody? I upgraded the BIOS to A04, but was having that "Thermal Shutdown" problem previous to that..still am. It seems that the machine shuts itself off if it doesn't sense any activity for about a minute or two.

The directions above don't make any sense to me because when I go into BIOS at bootup, There is no such thing as "System Event Log" nor "Clear System Event Log". Are these to be found under BIOS or in Windows Admin Tools?

I also can't find the files called "Dell Thermal Shutdown Utility" anywhere. Is this posted anywhere on the Dell site for download? I sure couldn't find it.

I own three Dell Optiplex GS200 (small network) and all three of them shut down by themselves due to a "Thermal Event". Pretty aggravating! All the fans are working properly, and nothing is blocking the airflow into the chassis.

If you guys have found the magic cure, please share it.
David

We have 40 Dell Optiplex 260 machines installed. All of them are mounted, horizontal, under the tabel.

After 1 day we had 2 machines shutting down automaticaly and when you turned the machines on, an error appeared.

"Alert! Previous shutdown due to thermal event. Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility"

And now, after 1 week, we have about 6 machines with this problem. Some of them have this problem everytime and some others once a day and sometimes once in 2 or 3 days.

Together with Dell Supportdesk we have tried a lot to get this problem solved. But still the machines shutdown automatically.

We have MS Windows2000 installed. There is no Dell software installed. Other software is MS Office 2000 and some tools like Acrobat Reader etc...

We hope Dell will solve this problem soon...........

Good day folks - anyone find a definite solution yet to the "thermal event shutdown"?

I work at a college in Saskatchewan with roughly 500 computers and 2500 users including students. Our standing purchase order with Dell is for the GX260 desktop. We've received about 2 dozen by now, and at least two are suffering the spontaneous shutdown due to a thermal event. Upon reboot the BIOS states;

"Alert! Previous shutdown due to thermal event. Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility"

One of them just shuts down for no apparent reason, the other shut down when the user inserted a floppy disk. His machine has also been observed to shut down without warning or provocation - such as inserting media. We've got a Dell tech coming out to replace the motherboard and heatsink in that machine.

I've read from other posts on the Dell forum that this may or may not solve the problem. My concern from a tech support standpoint is that, even if the problem is solved by replacing the mobo/hs, we cannot afford the downtime and administrative overhead involved with such a solution. We need machines that work correctly, out of the box, over the warranty period. The occasional defect is accepted but... 10 to 20% of our orders? We're hoping for a solution by the end of the month or we'll need to modify our standing purchase order.

Del-Mel suggests a routine that involves uninstalling/reinstalling software and reseating a couple chips including the CPU. The overhead in that fix is just too much if you've got dozens of GX260's to maintain. Further, I've also read another Dell Forum user's report that the fix did not work.? Anybody else come up with a solution? Anybody cancel their standing order yet? Given the substantial attention this problem has received on the forums, we'd be fools to continue ordering GX260's knowing there's a good chance they'll fail and consume  valuable administrative resources. Both ours' and Dell's.

Dell, have you got this one figured out yet?

I had a similar Thermal issue with a Precision 450 Dual Xeon right out of the box.  Would only last about 20 seconds or less before it would shut off.

Phoned Dell - they suggest to check the heat sinks, so I did and this is what I found:

Turns out it was the heatsink on the second processor was not attached - one retaining clip was not in place and the heat sink was lodged in at about a 20 degree angle (no contact with CPU.)

Cleaned and re-greased the heatsink/cpu, put the heatsink/retaining clips back in place and now all appears to be copacetic.

This is a critical problem with 75% of our GX260 (3.06GHz) machines!

Fixing each one by hand is not a solution.

Please DELL, are you listening?

Can you please provide an update here?

im not 100% sure, but the GX260 has a "static" history.

one common issue is when you insert a floppy disk, it shuts down with an thermal shutdown error. the real cause is the static electricity generated inside somehow.

Thanks for the "static" info, although I don't believe that is the problem in the cases I'm trying to resolve.

In two cases, the fan did stop so that was a valid error.

What I would like to find out is if this is *real* problem that will affect the majority of machines we have OR just a case of a bad batch of fans.

The large majority of them responded to being rebooted, and a few I didn't see what was done.

Time is money - free parts or not:  Exactly!!

Of the approximately 1500 Dell machines we have, 400 are GX260 machines.  Of those, about 10 machines perform the Thermal Event shutdown.  I can live with those statistics however, on the machines that are giving me the "Previous Thermal Event" message, I cannot get them to clear.  I have tried clearing the Event Log with no luck.  I have performed a re-image on the machines after clearing the log but the error message keeps returning.  I cannot put these machines back into service until a user can turn them on without seeing the error message.  Are there any further/new ideas on clearing this message?