Dell Inspiron 8100 Laptop Overheating

Revised on

Dell Ignores It's Customers

Once again, I had a customer in my shop with a Dell Inspiron 8100 complaining about the laptop overheating. The laptop temperature at the top of the keyboard, where your fingers are when you're typing was very very warm. Abnormally warm in my opinion. I put a temp probe from my Radio Shack multi meter on the back and waited for about an hour and the temp was at 148 degrees. I'm sorry Dell, that's too damn hot.

He said he called Dell and Dell said that it's operating normal. The fact the fans never turn on at all is normal. Yeah, that sounds right, yep, and the sky is pink too...

Here's the hoops that Dell made him jump through before I could help him...

Download the latest BIOs

That's great. We download the most recent BIOs per the advice of the Dell Tech on the phone and now the fans don't come on at all. Don't you like that? Before we updated the BIOs the fans would come on every now and then, but now (after 4 hours) the fan don't activate at all.

Called Dell back...

Now it's the power settings in the Control Panel. Right. So we changed the power setting to Always On and that did nothing.

Checked the temp again and now that the fans never come on at all, the temp is at 156 degrees.

Called Dell back...

Now they say that laptops that came with Windows ME or 98 had a special driver that controlled the fan. After talking to my client he confirmed that when he bought the laptop that the fans did indeed come on more often in fact he said the fans kind of bugged him because they would never go off and it was kind of annoying... okay, back to what the Dell tech told us... He said that since he loaded Windows XP (his laptop came with Windows ME from Dell not XP) that there could be a multitude of reasons why the fans no longer work or come on and now that Windows XP in on the laptop, Dell has no responsibility and he's on his own.

Don't you like that? Way to go Dell. Support those customers. In all fairness, I will agree here. Dell can only afford to test the laptop with the OS available at the time, but, Dell could've went the extra mile here I think.

So here's what you need to do.

With the laptop off, find where the fans are and blow on them. If they spin just by blowing on them a little then there ok. What we're checking here is if the fans are gummed up or not. Dust and wear can make little fans like these gum up after a year or so in a dusty environment. If the fans are gummed up then call Dell and order new fans to have them installed by a shop. We do this here at MH if you want. Just mail us your laptop and we can install new fans for you. It's about $150 with labor and all.

Okay, your fans are good. Now go to this website http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/. Christian Diefer the guy who is going to save your cookies here made a special program that controls the fans for you! How do you like that! And it's extremely affordable... free! I recommend you send the guy a generous tip for this. I have. People like you and me should support people like this or better yet, Michael Dell should hire this guy or throw him a big bone for doing what Dell can't or won't!

Michael