inspiron 6400 getting very hot (no, not the battery)

Question

I had my inspiron 6000 stolen in october, and insurance payed for a brand new replacement, a dell inspiron 6400 (6000 discontinued for some reason). This laptop is alright, but sometimes it gets unreasonably hot! it has a duel processor and 512mb ram (upgrading to 1.5gb soon). I do alot of PHP processing on it, but it's processor should easily be able to take it.   Anyway, one day after it had been on stand-by, i picked it out of the case, and the power light was on, the screen was black and un-responsive, it was 150 degrees farenheight (at the bottom, according to a thermometer), and i had to remove the battery to get a response.   A few weeks back, i noticed that the XP Label had been partly burned away! this is near the memory compartments.   I'll put a link to an image of it when i can find my digital camera ;).   Has anyone else had this problem? The battery code isn't in the overheated list, the second part of the code is OUD264. I have seen images of exploding laptops, and i don't want this happening. How can i stop this overheating from happening? Should i contact dell? Message Edited by arkinstall on 12-30-200605:23 PM

arkinstall · Answer

i have seen a program advertised on someone's sig, called l8kfangui, which controls fan speed. Can anyone give me a quick review of this? I notice it's not supported by Dell, so should I get it, and what are the prefered settings (if you have settings)

Kwopau · Answer

arkinstall wrote:

i have seen a program advertised on someone's sig, called l8kfangui, which controls fan speed. Can anyone give me a quick review of this? I notice it's not supported by Dell, so should I get it, and what are the prefered settings (if you have settings)

although it is not supported by Dell, but Only Dell Notebooks can read this. I use it's and it's fine. You customize when to turn on the fan or you can just leave it to watch the temp. I don't mess with the fan but i just use it to watch the temperature. And this will not damage your fan. But use at your own risk.

Comguard · Answer

The Windows XP Certificate of Authenticity (COA) sticker on the bottom should appear to have two burn-marks - This is normal.  Apparently it's Microsoft's attempt to combat software piracy.  All of the laptops and desktops sold by my company have this particular label.   I have I8kFanGUI running on all of my C-series and Inspiron laptops, and I normally enable hardware sensoring on the fans.  On my Inspiron 8100 (P3M-1Ghz), I set the fans to automatically spin up to a speed setting of 27, which is approximately 5500rpm on the fans.   On my Latitude C510 and C610, the settings are set to spin up to 36.  I think that sets it to approximately the same 5500rpm.   On my Latitude C400, the setting is set to 48, but that that's only because the laptop happens to be sitting in a slightly warmer ambient temperature.   Sorry, no experience with a Inspiron 6xxx series.  And I don't have it running on my Latitude D820.  I use a program called Notebook Hardware Control ( http://www.pbus-167.com/nhc/nhc_main.htm) to monitor the CPU & HDD temps, as well as provide advanced Speedstep control over what Windows XP provides me.   I8KFanGUI is useful if it detects GPU and motherboard temperatures.  Be warned that once you start the program that seems to over-ride native cooling settings.  If you keep it running, you should tweak it.   Regards, J.

1d49f54a95134b2 · Answer

You shouldn't need any fan utility programs, if your fan is working properly.

arkinstall · Answer

Comguard wrote:

The Windows XP Certificate of Authenticity (COA) sticker on the bottom should appear to have two burn-marks - This is normal. Apparently it's Microsoft's attempt to combat software piracy.

By "appear", do you mean a graphic or a real hole in the label?

If you do mean the hole, then thats good news.

Comguard · Answer

Sorry, I meant that the actual sticker itself is supposed to have the two little burn-type holes you mentioned.  I had a look at a half-dozen Dell Dimension and Optiplex desktops as well as three Lenovo Thinkpad laptops that passed through my office today and all of them have that particular marking on the Windows COA sticker.

Socket17 · Answer

I also had a 6400 e1505 that got to hot.. Hurray for poor cooling.. After the thing burning up and crashing. i called dell and they sent me a replacement.. the new one works great but i did get a laptop cooler for when i travel. I also made a homemade one out of a sheet of lexan and 2 120 fans and a old desktop psu to power the fans.. Works Great!!! under full load the temp never goes higher then 25c (74f).   Centrino Duo 1.84ghz 1gb ram 80gb Hd   Message Edited by Socket17 on 01-08-200705:44 PM

vtqh · Answer

you need to go to dells website and do a bios update, the current version is A12.

msreardon4 · Answer

my hard drive is running at 122f and my cpu is at 119f both are running hot Message Edited by msreardon4 on 01-31-2007 11:08 PM

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