Laptop fan starts but won't stay on

L

Lukas

Geek Trainee
I'm using a Toshiba Portege m200-s838 laptop, and recently decided to venture under the motherboard to see if I could find anything obvious causes for an unrelated problem. Unfortunately, upon reassembling the machine I have somehow caused a new problem to come up. When the computer gets too hot now, the fan will begin spinning (faster and louder than I recall it ever doing before) for about 2 seconds and then stop. It'll wait a moment, start again, stop again, and continue to do this a handful of times before the system decides to tell me to shut the computer off immediately. I've tried unplugging and plugging the fan back in and am not quite sure what else to do to make it behave.

What could cause this sort of behavior in a fan? Will I have to spring for a new one?
 
must be because the cpu is getting to hot, causing the fan to spin up quicker to cool it down. what are your current cpu temps? check in the bios. when you mean it stops u mean it stops completely or does it just drop in speed to normal?
 
I mean it stops completely, I'd compare to revving up a car and the engine just not starting. The bios hasn't been touched since or recently before this, and the heat should just be the normal load, but do you think there's a chance I might have disturbed the natural heat distribution when I opened the case? I'm more than willing to take another look.

EDIT: I'm running the machine at about 68 C right now, not sure when the fan tries to kick in but this pretty close. I'm not sure what it's supposed to be at, but that seems kind of high.
 
yea 68C is pretty high temperature is it 68C Idle? It sounds like you've got a overheating problem, that's the reason why the laptop asks you to turn it off immediately to stop it from damaging components.

btw: the cpu fan should be running constantly not stopping and starting.
 
I have a few things up now and it's at 65. If it is just running normal when it's not whirring up, then it's doing so rather quietly. I'll try to get view of it.

EDIT: Yeah, it's completely stopped. You know this machine always did seem to get a little warm, I'd hate to think I'd been overheating it for months now but maybe I should try out a different fan and see if that runs any better. Hopefully it's the fan's fault and not another motherboard detail.
 
sometimes bios won't even post if you cpu fan isn't working it's a fail safe mechanism to stop your cpu from frying. but what you should do is just replace the fan. reason why you laptop is overheating because the fan aint running, therefor when it hits a certain temp the fan will occasionaly spin up and your laptop will ask you to turn it off to avoid frying your cpu. if you dont turn it off it should shut off it self.

so yea just replace the fan for now and post back with results :)
 
I've determined that the problem is with the fan and not the motherboard (thank goodness). Thanks all, I'll have this sorted out in no time now.
Also, I've accepted that the sound was fried from overheat and am getting an external soundcard
 
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