Fan will suddenly stop, and screen freezes

Greetings all,

I have an Asus N61Jq. I know it's a bit older, but it's treated me pretty well until a couple months ago when I had to replace the fan. Again, it worked well afterwards. Now, all of a sudden, the fan will noticeably stop working, and the screen will freeze, forcing me to reboot. This has happened once or twice a day for the last week or so. I wondered if it was because the weather has been hotter here lately (mid 20's, C), so I set up my external cooling pad as well - no effect. Is it a software issue? I tried a system restore - no effect. Does anyone have any ideas/solutions for this? I've looked for other similar threads here, but could not find any. I hope it's not indicative of some serious hardware problem...

Thanks so much for your time!

 

Any BSOD`s? Install " BSOD view" utility and search for recent system crashes. Seems like a hardware fault. If the OS was not re-configured somehow after the new fan installation, than that sounds like hardware problem. Check for short-circuits in the fan circuit, if you are able to do it. In addition, do you still have your old fan? If it is working, try to install it and see, if the freezes will occur again.

Haven`t you upgraded CPU/RAM and/or flashed system BIOS?

 

Agreeing with propolkin that it does sound hardware related. The fan should only stop if the fan profile is setup to stop it when the temps are low enough. If the weather is warm and the fans stop at the time the laptop freezes, a component is probably on its last leg.

 

Hmm, this is distressing. I was hoping it would be something easier to solve, especially as the fan was brand new. I haven't had any actual BSOD's, it just freezes outright. In any case, it turns out my system was on a different setting, so it didn't have any records for BSOD View to analyze.

A tentative thought: I recently changed the power setting in Win 7 to 'High Performance'; it used to be 'Balanced'. Could my PC have been overclocking/heating because of the increase in CPU power?

Thanks for the responses!

 

It depends on your computer configuration. But basically yes, "High Performance" profile do not restrict any extra power to be supplied by motherboard - your CPU works on its stock clocks and voltages, that are shown in its default specefications. But even if it would be processor, fan should not stop spinning.

As I think, fan should stop spinning only if there are no control values(signal) sent from BIOS Fan Control Table to controller, that controls fan rpm. Or it can be power loss to the fan coil.

 

Well, it hasn't frozen since I posted this thread and turned down my power settings, but then I haven't done too much CPU-intensive stuff since then either. Thanks again for your comments, and hopefully it holds up! I'd prefer not to take it into the shop... Cheers!

 

Hope that the issue is gone. But in the place of you I would test the laptop on the stress tests.

 

Sounds like you have a hardware issue that balanced is helping to hide.

 

Well, it sounds like you're right. It froze again just now, and I wasn't even doing anything CPU intensive. I'm not confident enough at dissecting my notebook's innards to see if there's any loose connections or anything. I guess I'll have to take it in to a repair shop and hope they don't charge too much. Thanks again!