XPS 15 9550 noisy fan & disk usage 100%

Turtles

Turtles

Turtles

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Hi there,

I've had the XPS 15 for around a week and have noticed some issues. I've used the Dell Command update tool to update the bios and a few other drivers it suggested.

The first issue is the noisy fan. Even if I'm just browsing the internet or when the laptop is idle I still get a noisy fan. It happens much more often than my old macbook pro 2012 did, where I would only hear the fan being particularly loud when it was under stress from certain programs. This is pretty disappointing as I assumed a much more powerful machine and newer machine shouldn't have this problem. Is there anything I can try to fix this or is my machine potentially faulty? It does seem to be a very common problem so is it just a frustrating feature of the XPS 15?

The second issue is whenever I go into the task manager the disk is showing to be at 100% usage. Again this will happen when I'm doing basically nothing with the laptop and the machine is idle. I'm no expert but surely this shouldn't be like this? The CPU and memory usage seem normal for whatever I am doing but the Disk shows 100% no matter what.

Any advice appreciated, thanks. I have the i7, 16gb ram, 512mb SSD model.
 
Can't really offer a solution but my XPS 15 doesn't have either issue and it's also pretty new (only had it a month or so) however I have heard of the fan issues from reading about the laptop elsewhere!

Can't say my SSD has that 100% usage you mention when sitting idle - are you sure there's nothing going on in the background?

My fan only spins up under serious load or when it's charging the battery to keep it cool - otherwise it's pretty much inaudible.

I've a Toshiba SSD in mine - what's yours out of interest?
 
I have the same model: i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, 1080p screen.

The fan is usually inaudible during average browsing/typing use. If I've been using it on my lap or blocking some vents usually the fan will spin up a bit after an hour or so. I wouldn't class it as "noisy" though.

100% disk usage sounds a bit strange; what application is causing it?
 
Turtles said:
Hi there,

I've had the XPS 15 for around a week and have noticed some issues. I've used the Dell Command update tool to update the bios and a few other drivers it suggested.

The first issue is the noisy fan. Even if I'm just browsing the internet or when the laptop is idle I still get a noisy fan. It happens much more often than my old macbook pro 2012 did, where I would only hear the fan being particularly loud when it was under stress from certain programs. This is pretty disappointing as I assumed a much more powerful machine and newer machine shouldn't have this problem. Is there anything I can try to fix this or is my machine potentially faulty? It does seem to be a very common problem so is it just a frustrating feature of the XPS 15?

The second issue is whenever I go into the task manager the disk is showing to be at 100% usage. Again this will happen when I'm doing basically nothing with the laptop and the machine is idle. I'm no expert but surely this shouldn't be like this? The CPU and memory usage seem normal for whatever I am doing but the Disk shows 100% no matter what.

Any advice appreciated, thanks. I have the i7, 16gb ram, 512mb SSD model.
Click to expand...

The fact the you have 100% disk usage (and no doubt plenty of cpu usage to go with it?) explains why there is fan noise. Check if you have a rogue process causing the problem. My XPS remains quiet all the time at idle
 
The 100% disk usage is a windows 10 thing - google it, it's to do with pre-fetch/superfectch and other extra processes running in the background, easy to fix by disabling those.
 
PhoenixUK said:
The 100% disk usage is a windows 10 thing - google it, it's to do with pre-fetch/superfectch and other extra processes running in the background, easy to fix by disabling those.
Click to expand...

^ this.

I just had the same issue with my laptop (different model) if it's your primary hdd then the pre fetch and windows search is usually the cause.. If it's your secondary hdd (like it was with mine) then it could be bad sectors. I did a full chkdsk/r and it found issues and "fixed" them and since my disk usage is now what it should be.... I also used crystal disk info software and it showed my hdd is not doing too well, you may need a replacememt
 
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