How can I set the fan speed to 100% on a laptop?

Many people complain about overheating problem with the DV7, problems that sometimes are not even solved with cooling pads or additional fans.

The solutions range is not very comprehensive :

  1. Overheating Problem on Pavillion dv7-1270ca blames HP for poor design
  2. HP Pavilion DV7-2070eg fan noise & CPU overheating uses direct physical contact to cool the AC unit
  3. HP Pavilion Dv 7, Heat Problems claims it is a driver problem that causes the CPU to overwork. This can be easily verified using the Task Manager. In this article the Sound driver is said to be the cause.
  4. HP Pavilion dv7 notebook running way too hot recommends getting from Cool Master a 3-fan cooler that can be targeted on the hot spots, as well as another much more drastic solution:

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Have you ever cleaned out the fan or air duct? Most times this gets so filled with dust that air cannot pass through it very well.

I would suggest then also seeing if there is an update for your bios, this might give you more features or controls

then I would consider updating drivers for your graphics card and possibly doing things like disabling aero, etc...

I have a compaq laptop that had Vista on it, the fan was always on full speed, I installed linux on it and something seemed odd and I couldnt figure out what it was until I heard the fan turn on for a few minutes and then turn off... It ran WAY cooler under linux where it wasnt constantly taxing the GPU and CPU.

If this still doesnt seem to do the trick for you, get one of them laptop fan pads that has fans built into the bottom of it that you can set your laptop on. Although bulky and not idea, it will help keep your laptop usable.


  1. Check for any BIOS settings concerning the cooling, this is often very limited on brand computers but it's the best place to start.
  2. In Windows 7, go to Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Power Options\Edit Plan Settings and click on Change advanced power settings. Go to Processor power management\System cooling policy and make sure it's set to Active.

  3. Try using a third party tool like Speedfan