Inspiron 5150 Cooling Fan

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.

 

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?

 

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.