Inspiron 6000: I had the fan replaced, and it still makes noise!!!!

I am so tired of all the frustration my Inspiron 6000 has given me the past few weeks.

My fan has been making noise for a few months now. I've owned this notebook since Dec of 05'. I've had no problems with it, until the fan started up. The noise got worse over the past few months. I looked into replacing it myself, realized it required me to take apart a great deal of my laptop, so I purchased the fan online myself and just had it replaced at Microcenter.

I get my notebook back tonight, same noise.



What do you all think could be my problem? I also realized that at times my shortcuts don't appears on my desktop when I boot up until a few minutes pass. This happens probably 1 in every 6 times I start the computer.

I scanned my computer for viruses, spyware, nothing showed up. Ran CC Cleaner, disk defrag, etc.

Thoughts? My next move is to go back to Microcenter and spend $70 to run a diagnostic test, but I just spent $90 trying to fix it already ($50 for fan, $40 to have fan replaced).

ALL ADVICE IS GREATLY APPRECIATED! I am contemplating getting a macbook, but given my current financial state, I would really love to salvage my Dell if possible.

Thanks.

 

First of all, I'd do a clean OS install. If you've had it for over 2 years now and haven't reinstalled the OS, you'll notice a HUGE increase in speed. Even if you don't install a lot of software, over time the OS becomes bloated and slows down.

As for the fan, if a new fan is producing the same noise, then perhaps something is rubbing, or vibrating which is causing the noise indirectly.

 

CLEAN the notebook
get a can of compressed air for cleaning, and blow it in the vents
just make sure you don't inhale it :x

 

I don't have the original OS disks. It didn't ship with my purchase for some reason.

I do not want to clean the inside of my laptop. I don't want to open it up. I just paid someone to replace the fan.

 

Perhaps you should just pay someone else to do general housekeeping on your laptop then.

 

I also noticed the right hand side of the laptop gets much much warmer than the left. Especially near the arrow keys and on the bottom of the laptop. What a mess.

 

Different parts of the laptop will be warmer than others due to the placement of components. I'm willing to bet your HD is in the lower right side......hence why it's warmer.

 

Yep do this, a clean install & report back

 

I can't do a clean install. The laptop didn't ship with OS discs. And I don't know why, I'm the original owner.

 

not sure whether this is applicable to you or not, but something as small as say, a strand of hair caught in the grill of a fan will vibrate and rumble and cause a godawful amount of noise, and once you get one, things tend to build up.

it could be that you've got alot of "fluff" on the inside of your fan vents, this would explain the noise, and if your fan vents are getting clogged, could explain the heating up too ( though it is natural for some parts to be hotter than others, as said above, the processor will heat up far quicker than say, the graphics card etc).

try getting a can of compressed air as suggested, and use it to blow gentley through the fans, even if you just blew back into the fans (gentley) through the grill. what would be better would be to simpley take off the backplate (nothing overly complicated, just the backplate) and just blowing anything loose in there away, after a couple of years theres bound to be stuff cluttering up in there, and just because you replaced the fan doesn't necessarily mean the person doing the procedure bothered to clean it beforehand.

 

You had to have received either original OS install disks, or OS Recovery disks. If not, you should be contacting the vendor where you bought your laptop.

 

ran the extended diagnostics on the system, everything came up fine. the fan still makes a humming noise, but i'm going to just keep using the machine until i run into more problems.

thanks for the advice.