Powering Down Windows 10 laptop

[bruncher]

I have a high spec Dell laptop and I'm finding it gets very hot and the fan runs, if I close the lid rather than powering down.

Typically I return to the machine and find it very hot and the screen does not light up when I open the lid. I have to do a hard stop (button top right of keyboard. I use the same button to restart and usually get an error message "It looks like Windows didn't load correctly" and sometimes a message about a memory problem. When I run Dell diagnostics no problem found.

Dell actually came out and replaced mother board, memory and fan, but they don't seem to have solved the issue.

Am I doing something wrong (apart from not switching to Apple)?

[mc2fool]

As a general point, laptops often have their air vents, in and out, placed right where your clothes will block them when the laptop is in your lap! It's worth checking out where the air vents are on yours and putting it onto some kind of stand that lets air in and out freely whenever possible. I use a lidless 900g Family Circle biscuit tin (plastic).

That said, the laptop shouldn't be doing much at all when the lid is down; it normally should go to sleep. Check out what your settings for lid-down are. See Power Options under the Control Panel.

You may also want to install a temperature monitor, so you can see what's going on. I use https://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/. Also, look up what temperature your CPU should run at, just so you know what to expect.

[servodude]

Normally closing the lid would put a laptop in to a low power state: e.g. hibernate or sleep in windows 10

so If it is running hotter with the lid closed it sounds like it's not actually not doing what it should
have a look at how it is presently configured; this link might help with that https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/25230/beginner-geek-change-what-windows-does-when-you-shut-your-laptops-lid/

sometimes manufacturers try to be a bit too clever with these things and end up making things worse (and windows itself seems to handle this side of things in multiple places - so it can be tricky to get to the root of what is actually going on)

as it's a Dell you have you might want to check this link https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS-13-9350-overheat-when-left-to-sleep-and-drains-battery/m-p/7338057/highlight/true#M31497 that seems to suggest you can turn off some of the features running in the background (probably badly!) when in sleep

good luck
- sd

[Infrasonic]

Post the exact model number/spec and then we can search for specific issues/fixes.

ACPI implementation is the general area where power and thermal management is controlled. It's generally a combination of BIOS and OS settings.
The official documentation runs to thousands of pages, and just the thermals bit is quite lengthy.

As you can imagine then OEM's don't always get it right - with laptops in particular they are trying to juggle low battery usage and noise (fans off) against performance/heat dissipation. Generally if there are major problems they'll issue firmware updates (so run any Dell update apps to see).
Some PC's will let you adjust the fan curves, but as mentioned it sounds more like the ACPI sleep/hibernate mode is at fault in your case - there maybe some advanced BIOS settings to adjust there but it's not that common IME.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_ ... _Interface

Swapping out motherboards et al is OEM speak for we can't be bothered to actually fix the issue currently so will fob you off with what appears to be a new PC even though there is a more fundamental firmware issue causing it that won't get rectified any time soon (if at all, especially on older machines nearing end of support). Economics dictates here, they all do it - including Apple who have had many thermal throttling issues over the years related to high fan initiation thresholds (partly due to their popularity in creative environments like music where fan noise would be an issue).

Thermal issues are quite common these days because of consumers desire for lightweight slim form factor laptops - the only ones that really max out hardware performance for any length of time are gaming and workstation laptops, which generally weigh a lot more and have a much bigger chassis with better cooling.
'Business' class laptops tend to be a good mix between performance/transportability - but again they tend to weigh more.

[bruncher]

'Business' class laptops tend to be a good mix between performance/transportability - but again they tend to weigh more.

The model is XPS 17 9700 which I think puts it into this category. It's about one year old with 10th gen i7

I bought on-site repair service with it.

Thanks for the suggestions re settings, I will look into that later today.

[Infrasonic]

https://www.google.com/search?q=XPS+17+ ... CA4&uact=5

[Infrasonic]

'Business' class laptops tend to be a good mix between performance/transportability - but again they tend to weigh more.

The model is XPS 17 9700 which I think puts it into this category.

https://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/70/cam ... titude-hea

[Infrasonic]

https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS- ... 548#M69384

https://ftp.dell.com/manuals/all-produc ... d=99274347

Modern Standby on Dell Client PCs
With the increased demands of customers, and intelligence included in Client PCs, the need to have a long sleep period but quick access to data and resources is of paramount importance. To cater to this demand, the PC market is moving all systems from the legacy Suspend behavior to a Modern Standby where all devices are self-powered and provide a capability for near instant-on functionality, as well as periodic network updates, but maintaining long battery life while in low power.

Cont.

Modes of Modern Standby
There are two main modes of Modern Standby: Connected and Disconnected Standby.
These two modes allow for varying network capabilities of the system and should be evaluated independently of each other.

Cont.

From the above Dell white paper it looks like the issue might be connected standby - probably a lack of optimisation between the Dell BIOS around ACPI and Windows 10 - so resulting in the overheating issue. W10 should have updated drivers as part of its 'optional updates', have a look to see if there is anything specific there that might resolve. If not I'd be inclined to switch sleep mode off and try hibernate instead. If that doesn't work get rid of both and make lid closing power down a true shutdown with cold boot (if you can) - with an SSD boot drive it won't make that much difference anyway - a few seconds at most.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... rn-standby

[bruncher]

https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS-15-9500-overheating-while-sleeping-issue/m-p/7690548#M69384

https://ftp.dell.com/manuals/all-produc ... d=99274347

Modern Standby on Dell Client PCs
With the increased demands of customers, and intelligence included in Client PCs, the need to have a long sleep period but quick access to data and resources is of paramount importance. To cater to this demand, the PC market is moving all systems from the legacy Suspend behavior to a Modern Standby where all devices are self-powered and provide a capability for near instant-on functionality, as well as periodic network updates, but maintaining long battery life while in low power.

Cont.

Modes of Modern Standby
There are two main modes of Modern Standby: Connected and Disconnected Standby.
These two modes allow for varying network capabilities of the system and should be evaluated independently of each other.

Cont.

From the above Dell white paper it looks like the issue might be connected standby - probably a lack of optimisation between the Dell BIOS around ACPI and Windows 10 - so resulting in the overheating issue. W10 should have updated drivers as part of its 'optional updates', have a look to see if there is anything specific there that might resolve. If not I'd be inclined to switch sleep mode off and try hibernate instead. If that doesn't work get rid of both and make lid closing power down a true shutdown with cold boot (if you can) - with an SSD boot drive it won't make that much difference anyway - a few seconds at most.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... rn-standby

Many thanks for this. Your hunch about switching the lid-down function from sleep to hibernate, seems to have stopped the problem. You would think the Dell service desk would have thought of that before replacing so much hardware!

[Infrasonic]

Many thanks for this. Your hunch about switching the lid-down function from sleep to hibernate, seems to have stopped the problem. You would think the Dell service desk would have thought of that before replacing so much hardware!

Glad you got it sorted.

Like I said up thread economics trumps logic with these large companies.

This ACPI implementation issue and overheating/thermal throttling is a common problem across brands, It's come up on here a few times and they always swap the motherboard out first - and it never resolves anything.
If I was being cynical I might suspect that for PR/legal reasons the OEM's don't want to address the real causes of these issues. There have been successful class/group actions against them in the past for severe performance issues in this area.

You can get the same issue with smartphones, they can get hot whilst in suspend/sleep states with networking and background apps still running. I've had phones that I've stuck in the fridge for a bit in the summer as I was worried about how hot they were getting.

Keep checking for firmware updates from Dell and optional driver updates from Microsoft - they may release a fix at some point on the quiet.