Omega Drivers Issue

Hi Cubic, nice to talk to you again.

My machine continues to run cooler with the Omega 3.8.231 drivers installed. It hasn't crashed in over three months now (amazingly).

There was one occasion when it did exactly what you said. I was surfing the web about a month ago and for no apparent reason the fan kicked up about two notches. Like you, I thought it was strange at the time.

At the moment it is ticking over in semi-hush mode. No problems.

Out of curiousity have you been updating XP from the Windows update site. I haven't, for reasons I may come to later.

If the fan is constantly blasting out hot air while you're sufing the web then I would suspect something else. Presumably you've checked for viruses, spyware etc. Can you also tell me what anti-virus you're using. Now that you have re-installed the original Acer drivers this problem still exists, yes?

Hopefully Wombatten will drop by as we know he has them installed also.

Naturally, I am as concerned as you are.

If you can answer the above questions this will help.

All the best...

OK, I have to get some sleep (3am Here). Let's leave it a couple of days and see if anyone else has the same problem. I won't forget you. My gut instinct is that something is running in the background. If you can check START-RUN-MSCONFIG-STARTUP TAB for anytrhing that looks suspicious let me know.

Will talk to you soon.

Hi Cubic,

No takers so far then? There may be more interest at the weekend.

Let’s start with the obvious. As a point of reference I have given the Fan speed names and descriptions. There are about 4 or 5 different speeds that I can detect. I will point out here that I don’t use a notebook cooler.

1.Semi Hush Mode – Machine at idle, word, excel, browsing the Internet.
2.Breeze Mode – Spybot, Anti Virus or disk defragmenter is running.
3.Windy Mode – Congratulations, the X700 is running!
4.Hurricane Mode – Lara Legend Demo set to 1024x768 with full screen Anti-Aliasing and all settings at max. Doesn’t she look great!
5.Nuclear Blast Mode – You are using the Acer video drivers, Half-life 2 has just crashed, and I’d get that laptop off you lap as soon as possible because you’re going to get burnt!!!

By profession I am a software trainer, so there are better-qualified people in this forum to diagnose a hardware fault. Having talked to one of the technical guys at work we have arrived at the following conclusion about your machine.

1.There may be a problem with the CPU
2.There may be a problem with the fan controller
3.There may be some program in the background that is causing your processor to go ballistic.

The best piece of advice I can give you at the moment is to go into Launch Manager and turn off the wi-fi connection. Make sure that there is no other connection to the Internet. Restart you machine. Once the machine has loaded Windows it should be in Semi Hush mode. Open Word and Excel and it should still stay in Semi-Hush mode. No hot air, just the cool stuff.

Now, here comes the Interesting bit. Open a connection to the Internet and see what happens. The fan should still remain in Semi-Hush mode. If the fan starts going nuts at this point we can assume that your processor is busy talking to someone else.

It may be the case that you have allowed too many Internet services to be running at once. For example there are a load of services under START-RUN-MSCONFIG-SERVICES TAB. If you have configured Steam to load with Windows or other update programs this will naturally add to the laptops workload every time it connects to the Internet.

Did you also check START-RUN-MSCONFIG-STARTUP TAB. I always keep track of this, just as well because I came across a polymorphic virus/spyware about three months ago. It was a stubborn SOB that AVG, Spybot, & Ad-aware had missed altogether. You can identify it because the first two letters of the filename are DM ie; dmlhg.exe, dmxbl.exe, etc. It changes is name if you try to remove it.

However, if your machine never goes into Semi-Hush mode from starting it and there is no Internet connection, then I would suspect a hardware fault. What is the status of your warranty?

Don't know about the fan whirling, but then the Ferrari users usually want to tone down the fan, where us 5672 users are begging for the fan to turn on

When I loaded Omega's (6.7?) I noticed an immediate increase in overheating and performance slow downs. I went back to the latest ATI drivers. I think a few others had problems with that version, if I have the vs # correct.

You could try FileMon from sysinternals to see what files are being accessed at the time. It's freeware here:

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Filemon.html

Techno, i think you're talking about the Omega (Cat 6.5). Yes I tried these on the Ferrari as well and when it exited Far Cry I witnessed some very unusual graphical fireworks. Re-installed the Omega (Cat 6.3). I do not recommend the Omega (Cat 6.5) for the Ferrari 4005 either.

Hi Cubic,

Some interesting information from my end. Yes it did it again Friday night, the fan kicked up two notches (Windy Mode) while I was using the Internet. Mind you, this doesn’t really surprise me as the wi-fi connection had been established for about six hours at this point.

Baring in mind that this was a great opportunity to experiment, I immediately turned off the wi-fi connection and shut the Internet browser down. Guess what, the fan returned to Semi-Hush mode within about ten seconds. Interestingly we have come up with more or less the same cause. So this is not a hardware issue you will be glad to hear.

It may be the case if you’re using wi-fi like me, that there is a greater exchange of information between the machine and the router. This could be what sets the fan off (never thought about this!). If the noise is driving you crazy I suggest you cut off the wi-fi connection and close the browser down. Go and make a cup of coffee and give the machine time to slip back into Semi Hush mode. I agree it can be annoying. It would be interesting to hear from any 4005 owners who use a direct phone connection to see if they experience the same problem.

As far as the SERVICES TAB is concerned, I have turned off ‘Security Centre’ and ‘Task Scheduler’. Some of these services are required (marked essential), others are not, depends on what you’re doing and what software you have installed. You will have to experiment.

Anyway, I suppose that’s the best guess at the problem I can make. Although it may leave you in Semi-Happy mode! lol

When I bought the 4005 I knew all about the fan beforehand and luckily it doesn’t bother me that much. I can well see how it would bother some people a lot. You don’t have to look far in this forum to see people who would give anything for more cooling power inside their laptop, so it’s both a blessing and a curse at the same time. I don’t know if you have been following the Acer 5672 threads, but ever since this became news I have noticed that there has been a massive drop off in complaints about the Ferrari 4000 fan noise.

I will keep tabs on this thread to see if anyone else comes up with any other ideas. But until then we’ll just have to put up with the problem. I guess every machine has its odd quirks.

Hope to talk to you again;

Morph

When I run in to problems after installing omegadrivers I reinstall the latest VIA Hyperion drivers (VIA 4in1-chipset driver). It usually works, otherwise I just go back to a version that I know works.

True, my one has always been set to Portable/Laptop. Glad you sorted the problem out anyway... Morph