I have a Dell Studio XPS 8100, running Windows 7 Professional, which has been great for the past 2 or 3 years, A couple of weeks ago I powered the machine down and it said it needed to install 19 Windows 7 updates. I let it do its thing and all was fine and it powered up again.
However, it seems to have screwed up the CPU fan device driver somehow. The machine runs fine until it does something heavy on CPU - like for example video processing or bulk compiling and then the CPU fan powers up. So far so good.
However, once this happens the fan never stop repeatedly powering up and powering down again. Every 10 seconds you hear the fan powering up to full speed.....and then immediately stop again. It is driving me nuts.
I have installed SpeedFan and other monitors and they all say the temperature of everything is fine, quite low. actually It is as though a new driver that the Windows update installed has got a bug in it where, once the fan powers up to full speed, it constantly flips between full speed and idle.
The only way to fix it is to reboot. And then, of course, the next time anyone does anything CPU intensive it all starts again.
I am seriously considering buying a different server machine and my current thinking is that it won't be Dell given the current problems.
Can anyone help and save me from a nervous breakdown?
