After shutdown complete, fans startup again

This is a new experience. I've had this Vortex laptop 4.5 years now but about 6 months ago I stopped using it. I resurrected it today and at the end of the day put it to 'sleep'. After entering sleep mode and seeing the keyboard illumination go off and the mouse-led turn off and the fans stop, all seemed normal. But then after a gap of a second or two, the fans started up again. I'd used sleep for the first 4 years of using the machine, I almost never shut it down, and never experienced this. So I decided to wake it up via a mouse-click and after fully waking up, I then did a proper shutdown. Same story. After a gap of a second or two the fans started up again. First at a low level. I decided to give it a couple of minutes to see if the fans would shut themselves off after the temps got to a low level. The opposite happened though, the fans ramped up to a slightly higher level. I gave it a full 5 minutes and there was no stopping them. I'm forced now to disconnect power and remove the battery or the fans will run all night I expect.

I'm thinking that unless a solution comes, I'll remove the battery permanently and have the power-brick's power removed each time I shutdown :wacko:

The first thing I'd do is open it up and clean all the dust and muck from the insides. Pay particular attention to the finned heat exchanger(s) next to the fan(s) - this is where all the cooling is done and they get blocked up very easily.

It's also important to see what the temperatures are like before you sleep/shutdown. HWMonitor can do that for you.

What version of Windows is it?

Have you applied all the Windows updates available since you last used it?

ubuysa said:

The first thing I'd do is open it up and clean all the dust and muck from the insides. Pay particular attention to the finned heat exchanger(s) next to the fan(s) - this is where all the cooling is done and they get blocked up very easily.

It's also important to see what the temperatures are like before you sleep/shutdown. HWMonitor can do that for you.

What version of Windows is it?

Have you applied all the Windows updates available since you last used it?

Click to expand...

It's Windows 7, yes to the updates, and I did vacuum-clean it from the ventilation openings at least before I even turned it on.

It's so weird walking into the room hearing what sounds like the PC running hot and hitting the power button and instead of turning it off you turn it on and then the fans go down to zero until a few minutes after boot-up at which point the fans decide they'll go to level 1.

I do often use HW Monitor, and that was something I suspected. The package/core temps were all in the 40's (Celsius). I've had it run up to the 90's at peak usage in the past. Since that was happening too frequently I disabled the turbo mode by setting the max CPU level to 99 or lower. All day yesterday I had it at max 50% because I wasn't doing anything challenging and find that limiting the CPU to only what you need is a way of controlling the fan volume too.

I'll have a go at opening it up later in the day. Weirdly I'll need to leave it turned on all the time to keep the fan volume low :turned:

When it's in that state, does holding down the power button for several seconds switch it fully off? (Not that it's a fix, but at least easier than taking the battery out.)

mdwh said:

When it's in that state, does holding down the power button for several seconds switch it fully off? (Not that it's a fix, but at least easier than taking the battery out.)

Click to expand...

That sounds like something worth trying. I suspect it'll just turn it on (because it's already off) but worth a try.

I tried mdwh's suggestion but that didn't bring anything unfortunately.

But I discovered what the problem was. I still find it hard to believe, but it's true ...

I have a three-screen setup. Screen 1 is the laptop screen. Screen 2 is a big monitor. Screen 3 is a little 1280x720 super-cheap 10" thing that cost about 50 quid. I usually throw a browser window on it to watch youtube or run WinTV on it. So I'm in my weird fan-running-after-shutdown situation and decide I should disconnect the laptop and clean it inside. As I'm disconnecting the cables one by one, nothing's changing until I disconnect the HDMI cable for screen 3, at which point the fans immediately stop. Of course I then did all kinds of shutdown tests with and without that third monitor and disconnecting only that (and nothing else) and even re-connecting it after the fans stop.

That was it !!!! A device connected via HDMI cable was somehow influencing the machine to power up the fans 5-7 seconds after shutdown.

Luckily I'd already been wondering whether I want to keep that 3rd screen on the laptop and had thought about using it as a second screen on my other (Intel NUC) computer. Decision made !!

So if you're in the same situation, consider what's plugged into your monitor connections.

d4005 said:

I tried mdwh's suggestion but that didn't bring anything unfortunately.

But I discovered what the problem was. I still find it hard to believe, but it's true ...

I have a three-screen setup. Screen 1 is the laptop screen. Screen 2 is a big monitor. Screen 3 is a little 1280x720 super-cheap 10" thing that cost about 50 quid. I usually throw a browser window on it to watch youtube or run WinTV on it. So I'm in my weird fan-running-after-shutdown situation and decide I should disconnect the laptop and clean it inside. As I'm disconnecting the cables one by one, nothing's changing until I disconnect the HDMI cable for screen 3, at which point the fans immediately stop. Of course I then did all kinds of shutdown tests with and without that third monitor and disconnecting only that (and nothing else) and even re-connecting it after the fans stop.

That was it !!!! A device connected via HDMI cable was somehow influencing the machine to power up the fans 5-7 seconds after shutdown.

Luckily I'd already been wondering whether I want to keep that 3rd screen on the laptop and had thought about using it as a second screen on my other (Intel NUC) computer. Decision made !!

So if you're in the same situation, consider what's plugged into your monitor connections.

Click to expand...

Indeed, but when troubleshooting it's always wise to disconnect everything from the laptop/PC first....

Glad it's sorted.