Member Avatar for mattyd

Hello:

Recently one of the fans in my laptop is "grinding" usually within one minute of booting. There are three fans: the grinding one (the largest), a smaller one next to it, and a tiny fan positioned next to a heatsink.

At first we thought it was the hard drive making this awful noise :surprised:twisted:, but removed the bottom plate and were relieved to find it was this fan.

It sounds like: something is loose and causing this problem, the fan has become inbalanced in its mechanism and will not operate correctly now, or perhaps something is lodged in it.

Dust, ash could not cause such a problem could it? I am a programmer and do not know much about hardware.

Thank-you for any help in advance.

sharky_machine

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Member Avatar for DavidRyan

Dust, ash, bearings and so on.
It's a mechanical problem. Remove the fan, get a can of compressed air (one of the ones with a tube to direct a narrow stream of air) and spray into the fan at an angle to get the fan spinning). See if you can pinpoint a part of the fand which is causing the problem, and concentrate the blasts of air there. Also have a look to check that the small circuit board on the fan's hub doesn't get in the way of the blades.
If you can't dislodge whatever particles are causing the friction, or if you can't find any (in which case it is probably the bearings) you'll need to buy a new fan.

Member Avatar for mattyd

Dust, ash, bearings and so on.
It's a mechanical problem. Remove the fan, get a can of compressed air (one of the ones with a tube to direct a narrow stream of air) and spray into the fan at an angle to get the fan spinning). See if you can pinpoint a part of the fand which is causing the problem, and concentrate the blasts of air there. Also have a look to check that the small circuit board on the fan's hub doesn't get in the way of the blades.
If you can't dislodge whatever particles are causing the friction, or if you can't find any (in which case it is probably the bearings) you'll need to buy a new fan.

Thank-you for your reply. I will follow your advice and let you know. :)

sharky_machine

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