[rajah99]

Hi

I bought a vostro 1700 2.4Ghz, nvidia 8600M GT, as a second hand item.

Its testing out fine so far, but I cannot detect any sensors for cpu temperatures, or fan speeds.

With SISOFT Sandra, it says it cannot detect any sensors (cpu, gpu temp or fan etc).

With Speedfan it seems to detect the GPU temp sensor alone. I tried one other tool, but it too only found the GPU temp sensor.

The laptop has the latest BIOS installed.

If I stress test it using sandra (which i ran for about 5 hours), it didnt seem to get too warm. At times the GPU sensor shows the temp climbing to about 60celcius, and the fan comes on which takes the temp back down to about 45.

Can all the sensors be dead? Surely the cpu has built in sensors?

Any ideas, much appreciated.

 

[Snoopdogie187]

Hi, laptops are tricky at time to get the sensors to show. At first I had my Hard drive and CPU showing and not the fan, then randomly a temp1 showed up. This as without a bios update or anything, just randomly happened.

Also in speedfan, if you go to configure then options, there i an option for dell laptops. you may want to give that a try as you have a dell.

 

[rajah99]

Thanks Snoopdogie, I fear its a little more serious now.

I used the Real Temp 2.7 software, and it does a TEST with the CPU, and the value returned on both cores is 0 (which it says is an indication that the temperature sensor is failing).

Ive also managed to create a dell diagnostics BOOT CD and run the DELL diagnostics. They all passed except for ONE sensor, the CPU THERMISTOR.

The error it asks me to report to DELL is:
Error code 3900:0626
Msg: CPU_THERMISTOR - the temperature sensor is out of range at 0C

So is this something that is failing on the motherboard, or in the CPU?

 

[Snoopdogie187]

I don't know too much about the sensor part of computers, but it could be as simple as a wire being unplugged or something that is as bad as there is a hardware problem. You may also want to try a different bios as it could just be a problem in there.
Personal it is not something I would worry about, if the fan still comes on when it should, and the laptop never gets that hot when under stress, then I don't think you have to worry.

I would check for any unusal changes in the way the fan sounds.. does the fan come on as you notice it is getting hotter, is the fan always on and very loud. Things like that.

Also googling this error, some people had success with different bios, others dont, but a lot of people had this problem with varrious models of dells.

I would think it is a bad senor, or not connected or some how not properly placed(probably not that since that would give an incorect value).

This may also be nothing in that they have difrent configurations and this was just a left over spot for a sensor that never got used (they don't always lab everything correctly)

 

[dai]

check if you can get it with this
http://www.download.com/Core-Temp/3000-12565_4-10794077.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1153/TechPowerUp_GPU-Z_v0.2.7.html
http://pc-wizard-2008.en.softonic.com/

 

[rajah99]

Hi

Many thanks for the links. Infact one tool alone managed to find several sensors i8kfanGui.

It found memory/chipset/HD and fan sensors. But it also could not detect CPU.

One new bit of info. Ive found out that the CPU was recently changed from a T7100 1.8Ghz to a T8300 2.4Ghz.

There might be different heat and power consumptions on these processors. How would the mobo sensor know what different levels to check for?

 

[dai]

i would think the sensor would just read whatever is coming through