Laptop Fan Not Spinning

[SergioBC]

Hello Experts,

My laptop fan is not working properly. It started failing exactly during an upgrade to Windows 10 (from Windows 😎 and while I managed to complete the upgrade, the fan has pretty much stopped working. I did quite a bit of research and legwork and this is where I am:

- I get the fan cooling error 90B (fan not working) at boot-up. While I can press enter and boot up windows and operate the laptop normally, the fan never kicks in (in despite of the laptop increase of temperature, which I offset with an external fan that keeps it cool). 

- The fan on its own seems to work well (I tested it outside the laptop giving it direct the 5V current it needs and it spins perfectly).

- I dissassembled the full laptop, extracted and opened the fan, cleaned it fully (so please withhold any dust/lint/blow air suggestions).

- I also cleaned the heat sinks and replaced the thermal compound with new one, although the existing was not fully dried out yet

- In trying a couple of different things, I happened to dissassemble the laptop twice. Every time I reassembled it, the startup error goes away and the fan actually runs the first time I power the laptop on, for a few seconds and then it stops never spins again. This odd behavior prompted me to believe there could be a software issue, like a driver/controller issue from the upgrade process... but I haven't been able to find anything or any good tool to diagnose where things are failing.

- With the laptop fully assembled and on, I can measure and I have confirmed that I am getting the 5Vs it needs at the socket where the cable connects. The socket is easily accessible under the keyboard so I've tested and confirmed the voltage gets to the socket.. However, the fan is still not spinning. (wonder what the other 2 cables out of the 4 in the fan socket do/control?)

- I've run HP Diagnostic tools, windows system diagnostics, HP startup advanced diagnostics.. but nothing shows in those in relation to the cooling system

- I've installed and run SpeedFan... and the two fans it shows (not sure why it shows two as there is only one physical fan) are showing 0 RPM and the software does not have any effect no matter what I try with it..

- I can't access the BIOS, that's the only thing I haven't reviewed but when I boot up for some reason my ESC key is being ignored and I can't stop and get into the BIOS. I seem however according to HP to have the latest BIOS installed for my model.

So based on all of the above... I'm running of ideas and I assume that sending it in for specialized service will result in at least a couple of hundred dollars if not more... at this point I am wondering if there is any other fault in the circuitry (like a blown capacitor although I could not see any), or could the fan be faulty even if it spins when fed straight outside the computer? or why after a dissassembly/assembly of hardware it happens to run for a few secs before it dies again....

Any thoughts on how to pinpoint/what else to look at? Anyone else had this problem as a result of an upgrade to Win10? (by the way a lot of people who upgraded to Win 10 have the opposite problem... uncontrollable non stop spin)... lol.

Thanks in advance for reading and your thoughts and sharing your experiences.

Serge

[WAWood]

SergioBC

I have an HP DV6 and it is running Win10 without problems (including the fan) -- but I did NOT do the Upgrade.  That's because I tried it three times over the course of 6 months, each time using a different Win10 release, and it failed miserably each time.

What DID work was doing a clean-install from the lastest Win10 media I got from this link:  Installing Windows 10 using the media creation tool - Windows Help

Note that when you go do download and build install media, the tool defaults to matching what is already installed on your PC (as in, Home for Home, 64-bit for 64-bit).  While you CAN change these settings, do NOT. If you do, the resulting media will be different and will force you to enter a NEW product code!

What I would suggest, is the following:

1) Image backup: Use Macrium Reflect to do an image backup of your OS partition(s) to an external drive or large USB stick (more on this below)

2) Boot USB: Use the MR function to create a Boot USB or Boot CD -- whichever you need,

3) Do a clean-install of Win10 using the install media you created.

If the fan then works after the clean install, the fault was some crud that got carried over from the Upgrade.

Then, you have to figure out how to reinstall all your apps and recover all your data -- so you should save off the data before the clean-install.

If the fan still fails, then it's some motherboard fault and you can, if you want, use MR and the backup to restore your upgraded setup.

------------------------ Using MR -----------------------

What I recommend is the following:
1) Download and install Macrium Reflect (MR)
2) Run MR and choose the option: "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows" to write a full backup to an external drive or USB stick
3) Use the option to create a boot USB stick or CD

I use this all the time and it typically takes less than 10 minutes to do the image backup and about the same time or less to do a restore.  Plus, MR has the option to Add a Recovery Boot Menu entry.  This allows you then to boot into WinRE, and you can then use that to do a restore -- when you can't boot into Windows!

NOW, you have the means to restore a full working system from the external drive or USB stick in only a few minutes.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Good Luck

I am a volunteer and I do not work for, nor do I represent, HP.
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