Laptop Fans Stop Working Randomly

[Thislaptopwasex]

I have the same model with the 13900hx and a 4090. I spent so much money on this laptop for this to be happening with zero explanation. I've tried all the troubleshooting steps listed above and get the same issue. The fans randomly kick off and cant be changed with the controller. They'll start randomly. The PC will heat up to critical temps and shut down. Turning it back on, the fans seem to start okay and can be controlled. No problems with the sensors. Just losing complete control of the fans for no reason

[Guarfo]

Thanks! Although it makes me more worried!

HP should already have an official response about what's happening and how to fix it.

If HP could tell you which component is faulty, you could take the computer to a technical service and not continue losing money!

[alexbelm48]

Hello everyone,

I apologize if this necro-bumps the thread, but I am also experiencing the same issue on my Omen 17 ck2000nf (i9-13900HX+4090). This isn't an OS or fan issue, but rather an Embedded Controller one.

The EC is responsible for controlling the fans as well as a bunch of other things, but it seems that:

1. HP never correctly defined the fan curves from a firmware perspective, so using an Omen requires the use of a software to do the curving manually (either through the Omen Control Center, or manually for me on Linux by writing to the EC registers directly), otherwise you WILL experience thermal shutdown.

2. After a while, the EC starts dysfunctioning completely. Both fans stop unpredictably, restart randomly, regardless of the user's choice. Most people, including me in this forum post, experience this rather horrible issue.

I'm currently experimenting with the EC to see if there's a way to fix it. I am from France and currently in Canada for study purposes, so it is complicated for me to do an RMA right now.
For HP support, trying to reset the system by disconnecting the AC/battery and holding the power button for 30s/1min does not fix the problem.

Thanks,

Alexis

[Guarfo]

Alex, thanks for the information! (I am entering the forum every day waiting for a solution) Could you clarify if you suspect that the failure is the chip or firmware of the Embebbed controller? In case the chip has been damaged, I suppose it should be possible to replace it? 

I hope that the solution comes with a new BIOS, since my fans did not fail with previous versions.

[alexbelm48]

@Guarfo,

I believe it could be both, I'm not sure what triggers this erratic behavior for the moment. However, I am positive that it is not related to a BIOS update, and I can tell you that it happened before the version that you've cited in one of your posts. I, in fact, did not update my BIOS and the issue went out of the blue. What is really frustrating with this is that the fans can work for 10 continuous hours with no issues, and then start to dysfunction completely without a straightforward root cause.

I sincerely wish this is a firmware bug, and I think it could be the case since the people who took care of my laptop didn't change the motherboard. But right now I have nothing to prove or confirm that this is right.

I've made a script to track the RPM speeds vs sensor temperatures to see if there is some kind of correlation with that. Right now the fans haven't stopped for a while, I keep them at a fixed rate (any %/RPM can trigger the issue) while I go on with my regular work.

I'll keep this updated, whether if I find something or not :]

[alexbelm48]

EDIT: Nevermind, the fans stopped again... ugh!

EDIT2: My fans stopped today, and updating the register my command restarted the fans this time...??

OK.. I think I'm onto something.

I have found the 0xca register (also called GLCK in the DSDT) in the EC I/O space, which seems to be responsible of enabling power delivery to the fans AND the display panel.

It is set to 0, but setting it to 1 and then 0 makes the fans stop and start again respectively. Doing this seemed to have fixed the intermittent fan stopping issue, but I'll update this post if it reoccurs again in the long run.

I have run these commands on Linux, as root:

modprobe ec_sys write_support=1

echo -ne '\x01' | dd of=/sys/kernel/debug/ec/ec0/io bs=1 seek=$(( 0xca )) && echo -ne '\x00' | dd of=/sys/kernel/debug/ec/ec0/io bs=1 seek=$(( 0xca ))

It respectively exposes the EC to the kernel's sysfs and does the off/on switch on that register. Note that I have tried this on my ck2000nf, it should work on other Omen laptops. If it does something unexpected, just force shut down your laptop and do a hardware reset (unplug AC + hold the power button for 15+ seconds, plug back in and you should have to wait for a minute or two for the laptop to boot up again, it'll ask you to clear the CMOS region).

Looking at the occurences of GLCK in the SSDTs/DSDT, it seems to indeed be responsible for at least switching off the monitor, judging by the logs on the first screenshot:

There's also this portion of code that controls GLCK through GUAM, and IIRC RPL1/SPL1 both makes updates to the fan control PWM signals:

This is not an exact science, but at least I've tried understanding what is going on here from the software side of things. It would be great to take a look at the implementation of the EC, but I sadly do not have the hardware tools to do it. It isn't exposed to the processor or through the ACPI declarations.

For non-Linux users, you can boot off pretty much any Linux distribution. Open a terminal and login as root with su, you should then be able to run the commands that I've written on this reply.

I'd be glad to know if someone else could test this and check if this also resolves the issue on their end. That would either definitely confirm the workaround or refute my observations.

Thanks,

Alexis

[Guarfo]

Spectacular! I see you've made a lot of progress! I have a few questions from my lack of knowledge.

Are the screenshots from the latest BIOS?
Is it possible that a line of code accidentally left the global lock flag open and prevented changes, and that's why the fans don't turn on until an event occurs that opens and closes the EC write? I haven't found any pattern that can trigger the fans to turn on or off, there may be control routines behind this behavior.

Yesterday I had a really bad day at work. The fans turned off about 20 times! Today, about 4 times so far.

[alexbelm48]

@Guarfo, these dumps are indeed from version F.14. Do note however that this issue is not really linked to a specific version of the BIOS, and in fact has occured to me with version F.10, that was more than a year ago!

What I understood so far is that there are no real predictable ways to know when this is going to occur. Your report of the amount of "stops" is roughly in the ball-park of what I experienced today (3 stops to be exact).

I have made a separate post to bring this back to light on the forums: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Gaming-Notebooks/OMEN-17-ck1000-ck2000-cm2000-intermittent-fan-dysfunc...

(I feel like posts with an old creation date lose visibility)

Thanks,

Alexis

[SquoN]

I have the same issue with OMEN 16 C0000. I live in Turkey and i demand refund or new device. I changed the fans thinking they are faulty. Nothing changed. Issue happens with all operating systems. I tried Windows, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch.

I already changed the fans thinking they are faulty. This is not a fan issue, not a Gaming Hub issue. Just release a fix with bios update. I cannot use the device anymore because it gets to 100 degree on idle and fans are distracting.