Speedfan says 4 fans, but two at 0% -- (loudness problems)

I have a HP Pavilion m7480n (Intel Pentium D, 2 cores) running Windows XP Media Center, new in 2006. Was quiet until a few months ago it started a problem, it suddenly speeds up the fans and sounds like a 747 taking off (It wakes my husband up). I opened it and cleaned out a little dust, not much in there. I just downloaded SpeedFan trying to determine problem and it says it has 4 fans but two are running at 0%. Question.... does SpeedFan 'generically' show 4 fans for everyone and I only actually have two installed, or do I actually have four fans and two are dead? (And could they be accidentally turned off in BIOS or by some bad program/malware?) I can replace fans, I have built computers before, but would rather not if a software tweak can fix it. Advice? thanks, Tabby

Perhaps I should add my CPU sits on TOP of my desk, next to LCD monitor, in an ave.-temp bedroom; it has plenty of air flow, at least 8 inches on all sides. All vents are open and even after cleaning inside, it still speeds up LOUDLY even in light use. I tried leaving media-bay door open to cool it off, I aimed a little household fan at it, nothing helps.

 

No, it doesn't 'generically' show 4 fans for everyone. I gather you haven't opened your computer and you don't know how many fans you actually have installed. Is that right?

SpeedFan's showing of 0 rpm for one or more fans does not mean you have fans which are not working. SpeedFan can only report fan speeds where the fans are connected to the motherboard, not directly to the power supply unit in your computer, and this also depends on whether your motherboard was designed to feed data such as feed speed to software monitoring tools, and on whether SpeedFan has included your particular motherboard in their program coding for SpeedFan. In other words, SpeedFan may not be able to report fan speeds for all motherboards; there a great number of models of motherboards; covering all of them with a monitoring tool such as SpeedFan may simply not be feasible for it's developers.

I suggest you open your case and verify that all fans are working. All you need to do is open it the case with the computer off, then turn it on long enough to see that all fans are working.

Have you looked at your Task Manager to see how much CPU Usage it reports at various times? Perhaps you have some programs, or spyware, that's tasking your processor and you're not aware of it. In other words, your processor is working more than it should be and that's causing it's temperature to rise and your fans to run more than they should.