m50sv system standby/lid issue

I've recently been having some issues with the fan in my m50sv, which is now out of warranty. It was not a dust issue, as a visual inspection of the exhaust looked clear of debris. I opened the bottom cover, and the fan also looked clear of debris there as well. The issue I'm having with the fan is that it gets very loud/grinding (literally hear-it-across-the-house loud) when it goes beyond a very low speed.

Having had a similar issue with video cards in my desktops in the past, which I resolved by putting a small drop of oil on the center of the fan under the sticker, I thought I would give it a try with my laptop as well ("It's out of warranty", I thought, "So why the heck not!").

I followed this guide step by step and was successful in getting to the fan under the keyboard and bezel, unfortunately it wasn't the type of fan a dab of oil could fix, so I reassembled my notebook... and this is where my issue I made the topic about began:

Since re-assembly, my notebook will not go into standby when I close the lid. It WILL however go into standby when I re-open the lid, and subsequently come out of standby when I close the lid after that!

When powering down my notebook via Start -> Shutdown in XP with the lid open, it will shut off but immediately start back up if either my battery or power cable are connected. The same goes for a hard shut-down with holding the power button for 5+ seconds. The only to shut off my laptop is to remove both the battery and power cable.

When I disable standby-mode when the lid opens or closes, nothing happens (which is great, and normal operation). However, the power-down instant-power-on issue described above still occurs.

Is anyone familiar enough to know where the physical connector that control this is? I'm assuming it's completely hardware and not software since it only occurred after I removed my keyboard and bezel.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I need to send my laptop in to Asus for out-of-warranty repair for my fan regardless, but I'm confident they will either charge a ton of money to fix this standby issue, or wipe my OS and claim it's software and not fix the issue at all, so I'd rather try and fix at least this it before sending it in for my fan.

 

There is a sensor, sometimes in the hinge, sometimes on the body of the laptop that detects when the lid is open or closed. It sounds like that sensor is failing or has a bad connection (I'm not even sure if it is connected with a cable...).

You can probably replace your fan too, just find the model number on it and look on ebay or amazon, etc.