Inspiron 5150 Cooling Fan

[thebone777]

This may seem like a silly question, but I'll ask it anyway. I have had my Inspiron 5150 laptop for about a week now. Today I installed Spybot and Spyware Blaster (or whatever it's called). I ran Spybot and fixed the problems it found. I noticed, however, that my cooling fan completely cut off. I don't know if this has always been happening and I just now noticed it for the first time or what. Now my fan seems to come on every once in awhile, and only runs for 10-30 seconds. The manual says it is supposed to run continuously. I restored what Spybot took care of, and deleted both it and Spyware Blaster. Still, my fan doesn't seem to come on very often. What should I do? I doubt this has always been happening; I think I would have noticed it earlier. How can I fix this, and how can I run a test to ensure that the fans and everything related are working properly? Please help! Thanks.

 

[shadowcat]

Hello and welcome to TSG!

The fan will be running continuously, but it only kicks into high gear (that's probably what you're referring to) when the processor/hard drive/cd drive is doing lots of work. The motherboard has a temperature sensor that tells the fan when to go faster because it's getting too hot inside the laptop.

However, if the computer reboots, shuts down, gives many error messages and/or the fan does not go into high gear, then there is a problem with the computer.

Are you noticing anything wrong with the laptop?

 

[thebone777]

Thanks for your help. No, there doesn't seem to be anything abnormal with the laptop other than the 'problem' (if it is indeed a problem) I described. The cause for my concern, I suppose, was the fact that my laptop, to my knowledge, had never been absolutely silent before. I suppose I was just overreacting, and was inattentive to the lack of fan noise earlier. One thing, though. I did try to play a DVD, thinking that would make the fan go into high gear, and I couldn't discern any fan noise whatsoever. I probably just didn't hear it due to the noise from the movie itself. As I'm typing this, the fan noise appears normal, so I guess everything is okay for now. Thanks again, and I'll let you know if anything goes wrong.