Fans kicking on for no reason?

Hello all.

This is a strange issue I've been having the past few days. Out of the blue, what appears to be both my GPU and CPU fans turned on to 'high' after the computer was resting idly at night. I waited for it to stop but it never did. Eventually, I actually had to manually turn the fan down using the program HWInfo.

Now, whenever I restart my computer, it's silent, but then that fan kicks in and revs up to high levels. It won't stop until I manually shut it off. What could be the issue here? I'm pretty sure I don't have a virus or anything, and up until now the computer has ran flawlessly for me. It's a laptop, by the way.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Usually the culprit is just a stockpile of dust inside the laptop.
If you don't feel comfortable opening and cleaning it, take it to a nearest service.

Perhaps also replace the cooling paste, some laptops come with fairly low-quality stuff. I had to replace it on my old HP Envy machine, when just removing dust wasn't sufficient.

But before that, as mr. J suggested, get rid of the dust.

pibbur whose occasional attacks of coughing seems related to a stockpile of dust transferred from computer fans to his lungs.

As others mentioned regarding the dust and thermal paste.

However, before that it is worth looking into your task manager to see if there are any programs or activities that are straining your cpus (which you can then turn off if necessary).

I had the same problem with my Alienware this summer. I just took the back of it off and pulled the fans out and gave them a good cleaning with a Q-Tip and used some canned air and blew out the air ducts.

I don't think there has been any issues with the thermal paste on them in a years unlike some other cheaper brands. Though the paste isn't that much money and you can watch some you-tube videos on how to check this once you have taken the back off of it and how to fix the problem.

Good practice is to clean the fans out ever so often and we have a lot of pets in our home so there so with the extra pet hair in the house I do it ever 4-6 months.

When I install the new graphics card in the laptop I will clean the fans, too. I have a feeling it's some rogue process that I'm unaware of in my task manager, though. Thanks for the tips, all!

Originally Posted by Fluent
When I install the new graphics card in the laptop I will clean the fans, too. I have a feeling it's some rogue process that I'm unaware of in my task manager, though. Thanks for the tips, all!

I have a program some place on my laptop that I will send you the link to that should help you. It also includes help with fans and other power options.

HWInfo seems to work for this purpose okay. All I have to do is click "System Auto" for Fans 1 & 2 and the fans stop and go back to working normally. Strange, though.

Originally Posted by Fluent
When I install the new graphics card in the laptop I will clean the fans, too. I have a feeling it's some rogue process that I'm unaware of in my task manager, though. Thanks for the tips, all!

Download something like the Tails live DVD, and burn it. When you boot from this disk, it will load a Linux desktop, but it won't install or touch anything on your system.

Then see how your fans behave, and this will help to confirm or rule out a software problem on your Windows installation.