Dell D620 fan not working before and after replacing.

Originally Posted by PFCBarefoot 

Just as the title says, my Dell D620 that I just got second hand was overheating because the fan was not working. I opened it up and found all kinds of dust bunnies stuck in the fan. I cleaned it all out with compressed air but the fan still did not spin. I just figured it had burnt up. So  I replaced the fan with an after market one on ebay. I installed it with no problems, booted up the system and the new fan still wont work. No spin, nothing at all. 

I don't know if I have a mobo issue, bios issue, or two bad fans...

Anyone have any ideas as to what my problem is?

Thanks,

Dell D620
BIOS A07
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz
4GB DDR2
OCZ Vertex 2 SSD 60GB
Window 7 Home Prem. 64-bit



EDIT: I just updated to BIOS A10. The fan worked for 5 seconds while the BIOS was updating. After the update it still does not work and the CPU overheats. That leads me to believe that it is a software issue. I did not see anything in the BIOS related to fan control.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

Originally Posted by Antspec 

Wow, someone else did the exact same thing I did 2 years ago.  I bought a Dell D620 in the spring of 2010 from eBay.  A second hand unit.  The person who I bought it from described a problem where they would be able to load into Windows for a few seconds before the screen goes black.  Since I'm a PC junkie, I figure that I could fix this problem.  I took the challenge and I am "somewhat successful" in fixing my unit.

Basically, the computer will overheat, then the screen goes black and the power light will still be on.  You will have to hold the power button down for four seconds to shut the notebook off completely.

Problem: Something is defective or broken on my Dell D620 unit that prevents the fan from automatically spinning up.

Things I had done with my unit:

Dust bunnies in heatsink vent area. Yep.  Clean with compressed air can and vacuum cleaner.
Replaced "supposedly" broken cooling fan with a new OEM unit.  Yep.
Replaced the heatsink from a single prong unit to a dual prong unit.  Yep.
Used Arctic Matrix Thermal grease on CPU and heatsink.  Yep.

I pried off the small panel that covers the power button and removed 3 screws holding the keyboard down then I flipped over the keyboard and used a tabletop fan to cool the CPU to get to the next stage:

Updated the BIOS to A10 in Windows.
Disabled Intel's Speedstep in the BIOS.  Effectively limiting the CPU speed to 1.0Ghz.  I did this to reduce heat generated from the CPU.  If I didn't do this step the notebook will still overheat.
Downloaded i8kfanGUI from http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/ and installed the program in Windows.
In i8kfanGUI, click on "Force Fan Speed to High" and there is also an option somewhere in the program to make sure the program loads when Windows starts up.
Using i8kfanGUI, make sure the core temperatures of the CPU never reaches 55 degrees Celcius, the point which the system locks up and the video goes black.
Shutdown the notebook and place the keyboard and power strip panel in the right positions.

Power on.

Hopefully this will fix your problem as it fixed mine.

By doing this, my notebook became an "Undead" Notebook.  If you take it outside during hot weather, it will still overheat with the same symptoms.  If you use it in an air conditioned room it will stay on.

The downside to this fix is that the battery drains faster because the fan is always on.  To combat this, I have purchased a secondary modular battery that goes in the DVD drive slot.  I get around a total of 4 hours of total battery life with the two batteries in the notebook.

My specs:

Dell D620
BIOS A10
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz, running at 1.0Ghz with Intel's Speedstep disabled.
2GB DDR2
120GB Western Digital Sata Hard Drive
Onboard Intel Graphics Chipset
Windows Vista Business OEM 32-Bit. (Previously Windows XP Pro)