Thermal throttling/fan issues

Please help, I've been put through hell by HP's customer support!

Okay, here's my problem. I have a HP pavilion dv7-1240us that I bought in January. About a week ago, its fans stopped running at full-speed like they used to. This causes my CPU to overheat sometimes when I played WoW, something that NEVER happened before. My system then activates some sort of throttling control, and the whole thing freezes up. I've cleaned out the vents with compressed CO2, updated my video drivers, flashed the BIOS, and tried to up the fan speed using a program called 'SpeedFan'. However, when I tried to configure fan speed, no devices showed up, which makes me think that it isn't compatible with newer computers. I've asked people on the HP forums whether I can go into BIOS and change the fan speeds that way, but they say that it's really limited on the newer computers. Please, does anyone know what I can do to fix this? If I get one more person telling me to reinstall the video drivers, I'm going to scream!

Well, good news! Its nothing to do with your video driver! lol. When you were using SpeedFan where you on the administrative account? Windows may be blocking it from showing your fans. Did you try Running as Administrator?

Those things aside, sounds like you may have a faulty power supply. Many manufactures do not install sufficient cooling mechanisms. Also, Not sure if you are a smoker or not, but smoking around a computer can get tar built up on the fan blades and all inside every crevice of the fan. That would cause your computer to over heat.

As for changing fan speeds in the BIOS, I do not know how to do that, but I'm sure if what I said doesn't help then someone else will be able to guide you.

Thanks, I tried running it as an administrator (There's only on account on my computer, and it's the administrator), and it allowed me to monitor an additional temperature, but still no fans. And I'm not a smoker =)

Also, the fan revs up to full speed when it's booting, but then kicks back down once windows starts loading and never reaches those high rpms again, even though it used to before. So they're still capable of working at higher speeds, they just don't kick in when they're supposed too.

Skepsikyma wrote:

Please help, I've been put through hell by HP's customer support!

Okay, here's my problem. I have a HP pavilion dv7-1240us that I bought in January. About a week ago, its fans stopped running at full-speed like they used to. This causes my CPU to overheat sometimes when I played WoW, something that NEVER happened before. My system then activates some sort of throttling control, and the whole thing freezes up. I've cleaned out the vents with compressed CO2, updated my video drivers, flashed the BIOS, and tried to up the fan speed using a program called 'SpeedFan'. However, when I tried to configure fan speed, no devices showed up, which makes me think that it isn't compatible with newer computers. I've asked people on the HP forums whether I can go into BIOS and change the fan speeds that way, but they say that it's really limited on the newer computers. Please, does anyone know what I can do to fix this? If I get one more person telling me to reinstall the video drivers, I'm going to scream!

Hi, I just created an account to comment on this post. I have the same laptop model (HP Pavilion DV7 1240US) and I'm also facing the slow fan problem. Did you find a solution? Yesterday I replaced the cooling fan with no results (along with other posible solutions). Since this is a very old post, I'll be glad to read from you.

Thanks in advance.

Many motherboards have fan control built-in to the BIOS settings these days, though they don't always give you as much control as something like SpeedFan does. But, if your computer isn't supported by SpeedFan, this is a good plan B. Open up your motherboard's BIOS settings (usually by holding a key like Delete when you boot your computer), and search for the fan settings. They're called all sorts of different things (for example, Asus has "Q-Fan Control", while Gigabyte has "Smart Fan Control"), but generally you should be able to find it under one of the BIOS menus.

Thank you FreeBooter, but I've already done that before. Unfortunetly, there's not much to do on HP's restricted BIOS settings where only "Fan always on" can be set. Now that there's almost nothing left to do I'm going to get a heavy-dutty cooling pad to see if that solves my problem.

  Best regards.

Let us know if that solves your issues, because it may help others reading this.