Fans running at full speed all of a sudden, help please!

Caveat:   I only six months ago acquired an Alienware 14.   But: noticing what has been said here on the forum before.   Install the hardware monitor to show the real temperatures your computer is getting too.   CPUID HWMonitor.

Some on the forum have reported that at about two years, in the cooling, one can take it out, and there is developed some kind of gunk that is in.  They clean it out, and restore some kind of coolant stuff.  

I am being vague because you will need to look up how to do that before opening the computer.  Do not depend on me.  I am just seeing what others have said about an issue like this.  

I thought a fast reply might be comforting.  I think the Alienware techs will come along and start first with just installing the little HW monitor program to see the real heat inside. 

And I raise a point for others to answer.   Stacked fans are supposed to be bad.  Like you have a stacked fan with the fans in your computer, and the Logitech Laptop Cooling Fan.  Doing this can burn out the internal fans of your computer.  For another Reference on this point.   See the plane crash of Howard Hughes when he tried to fly a plane with two propellers on top of another could not keep up his airspeed. 

I have also thought about raising my laptop up off the table to allow for better airflow though.  

Let us know what works for you.

Oh Lookie here:  http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/alienware/f/3746/t/19509803

Ok, it seems the same exact problem has developed on my M17x R4 at the exact same time.  I walked into my office today, and it was running full blast.  It's probably been going since last night.  This is probably not a coincidence.  I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate and have had mine since December 2012.

I'm not sure what to do about it.  I'm considering reloading an earlier image to see if that helps.  I'm worried that the fan is going to blow itself out.  I think I'll shut this computer down until I have time to dedicate to fixing it.

This is due to an automatic Dell update that happened within the last day or so.  I was able to stop the fan by disabling two new services that were installed.  Go into the Administrative Tools and get into the Services.  The two services are call Dell Data Vault and Dell Data Vault Wizard.  Right click on each one and go to properties and change the startup type to disabled.  Now you will need to reboot and since they are disabled they will not start and hopefully your fan will not be on full blast.

Thanks a million!  I wasn't looking forward to troubleshooting this myself.  I'm swamped with other responsibilities.  One thing I like about the alienware community is that the majority of us have some computer expertise, and we take the running condition of our computers seriously.  So, thanks again.  In the other thread, a guy mentioned that he lost alien autopsy.  I haven't checked mine yet, but did you?  I guess I'll be shutting off the automatic Dell updates and closely scrutinizing them from here on out.  It ***, but now I don't trust them.

Yeah this update replaced AlienAutospy with SupportAssist and made our fans go berserk. 

Thanks a million!  I wasn't looking forward to troubleshooting this myself.  I'm swamped with other responsibilities.  One thing I like about the alienware community is that the majority of us have some computer expertise, and we take the running condition of our computers seriously.  So, thanks again.  In the other thread, a guy mentioned that he lost alien autopsy.  I haven't checked mine yet, but did you?  I guess I'll be shutting off the automatic Dell updates and closely scrutinizing them from here on out.  It ***, but now I don't trust them.

See, I uninstalled both of those programs from programs and features and now it doesn't sound like my fans are working at all. I'm worried that uninstalling them has broken my fan drivers now.

Simple, open a game or something and it should turn on. Or feel and see if your laptop is hot after a while of running a game or something. 

I can say in my case; It works just like how it used to, I don't hear the fan unless I'm playing a game that uses A LOT of power.

Had the same problem, ran the fixes suggested and seems good to go.  Thanks for the help!

See, I uninstalled both of those programs from programs and features and now it doesn't sound like my fans are working at all. I'm worried that uninstalling them has broken my fan drivers now.

I rolled it back to before these awful updates and everything works just fine now. At least I know what i'm dealing with now. Thank you!

I had a similar problem with my Dell XPS L702X laptop. In my case when playing audio and video it would seem to hiccup occasionally or make a buzzing sound. Also my mouse would momentarily freeze on screen. It would do this every 1-2 minutes. After several hours of troubleshooting I found that stopping the Dell Data Vault service solved my issues.

I contacted Dell technical support and they said that this service is only used if you use backup service with Dell. So unless you use Dell backup service it is safe to simply stop the Dell Data Vault service and change it's startup type to disabled. I also have a service called Dell Data Vault Wizard which I have stopped and disabled, although it didn't seem to cause any problems for me. But since I don't need it why take up system resources?

I am also not pleased that this was installed without my knowledge or consent and I told the tech support person the same. By now Dell must be starting to get the message about this issue and hopefully will be able to resolve the problem soon.

We have identified the root cause of the fan issue on the Alienware M17r4 with SupportAssist and are working on several fixes. The issue is an existing BIOS issue that SupportAssist identified when installed. When the fan sensor is read, the M17xR4 BIOS is keeping the fan turned ON after the first read which is not the expected behavior. It appears to happen only on the M17xR4. We have initiated work with BIOS engineering to address that issue. In the meantime, we are in final testing of a configuration hotfix for SupportAssist that will prevent it from triggering on the M17xR4. We should have that available by tomorrow to share.

We appreciate the forum members bringing this issue to our attention so quickly.

Hi Dave. Good to know the engineers are fixing this. This is happening to a lot of machines tho, not just the m17x R4, I'm having this issue with an AW17 R2 and a few others with the 14. Some machines it does a test every ten mins and freezes the machine in the process, but a friend called me up with an AW 17 and he says his GPU fan is full all the time now since the forced update to SupportAssist from AlienAutopsy. Uninstalled SupportAssist and the SupportAssist Agent service resolved this for him.

en.community.dell.com/.../19617463

Yesterday, we posted an entry into this forum indicating that a hotfix to the issues you described would be available today.  This fix has now been developed and successfully tested internally, however we feel it important at this time to assist customers with this hotfix to ensure it addresses the problems they are seeing in their particular configurations before posting the fix for wide distribution.

We have already contacted a number of customers who reported the issue on this forum and thus far, results have been positive.  If you would like us to work with you to implement this hotfix, please place a reply into this forum and we’ll contact you as quickly as possible.

I would like to try the hotfix, I'm not only having issues with the fan but also my laptop started shutting down while playing certain games after the update, and I wouldn't like uninstalling AA (now SupportAssist) because I use it quite a bit to keep track of what's happening in my laptop.