I noticed that the main fan on my laptop (dell 9400 inspiron) is was on a lot lately. It would come on after 5 minutes and stay on... full power, maximum RPM... hmmm....
Had a look at the laptop and noticed there are two fans... A small one over the CPU, and a main one that cools the whole internals.
The main one was on all the time, and the small CPU one did not seem to come on at all. (that side of laptop was always hot too)
I downloaded a program (http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/) that allows you to manually activate the fans to check they were working. Sure enough the secondary(small CPU fan) would not spin with the test program.
I carefully opened up the laptop and removed all the pieces I needed
to access the fans. This involves carefully removing all casing screws, then removing the keyboard screws, then removing the screws under the keyboard too. You need to disconnect the keyboard, the WLAN power wires, the cr2032 battery wires, the screen bus, and 2 or 3 other connectors. just take note of what your disconnecting and how it is connected. Once I had seperated the laptop into two pieces and exposed the fans, I noticed a big piece of lint/dust ball in between the small CPU fan blades.
I removed it, and noticed there was more... and more... between the
blades was full of dust clumps.
cleaned it all out, and used a hoover on very low power just to pull
out/expose some bits I could not reach with a tweezers...
put it all back together after a good cleaning, worked perfectly and
the secondary fan now spins keeping the CPU side of the laptop
cool, therefore avoiding the main fan running permanently to
compensate.
It got me thinking, anything with fans needs regular service,
especially if used in dusty environs like a home. I reckon a lot of
computer hardware failures are caused like this.
lint blocking a fan, CPU over heats and fails. or hard drive over
heats and fails. I think Dell should have a warning light pop up on the screen when the BIOS tries to run the fan but it does not spin. anyway, it works great now and my internal fan hardly comes on at all now as the CPU fan works silently every couple of minutes.
the CPU fan, lint already visible
all this came out of the spaces between the fan blades. no wonder it would not spin....
all cleaned and working perfectly now. both fans spinning so internal fan does not come on at maximum and stay on anymore... laptop much cooler on the chip side too...
I hope this can be of help to someone. Any questions just PM me or reply in the thread. Cheers
Had a look at the laptop and noticed there are two fans... A small one over the CPU, and a main one that cools the whole internals.
The main one was on all the time, and the small CPU one did not seem to come on at all. (that side of laptop was always hot too)
I downloaded a program (http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/) that allows you to manually activate the fans to check they were working. Sure enough the secondary(small CPU fan) would not spin with the test program.
I carefully opened up the laptop and removed all the pieces I needed
to access the fans. This involves carefully removing all casing screws, then removing the keyboard screws, then removing the screws under the keyboard too. You need to disconnect the keyboard, the WLAN power wires, the cr2032 battery wires, the screen bus, and 2 or 3 other connectors. just take note of what your disconnecting and how it is connected. Once I had seperated the laptop into two pieces and exposed the fans, I noticed a big piece of lint/dust ball in between the small CPU fan blades.
I removed it, and noticed there was more... and more... between the
blades was full of dust clumps.
cleaned it all out, and used a hoover on very low power just to pull
out/expose some bits I could not reach with a tweezers...
put it all back together after a good cleaning, worked perfectly and
the secondary fan now spins keeping the CPU side of the laptop
cool, therefore avoiding the main fan running permanently to
compensate.
It got me thinking, anything with fans needs regular service,
especially if used in dusty environs like a home. I reckon a lot of
computer hardware failures are caused like this.
lint blocking a fan, CPU over heats and fails. or hard drive over
heats and fails. I think Dell should have a warning light pop up on the screen when the BIOS tries to run the fan but it does not spin. anyway, it works great now and my internal fan hardly comes on at all now as the CPU fan works silently every couple of minutes.
the CPU fan, lint already visible
all this came out of the spaces between the fan blades. no wonder it would not spin....
all cleaned and working perfectly now. both fans spinning so internal fan does not come on at maximum and stay on anymore... laptop much cooler on the chip side too...
I hope this can be of help to someone. Any questions just PM me or reply in the thread. Cheers
