Inspiron B120 with loud fan - fix? abandon? ignore?

I'm helping a friend with an Inspiron B120 with a loud fan. Its not _terribly_ loud, but it does sound tired and like its trying harder than it should need to.

Is this something to be concerned with? Is it a common problem? How difficult is it to replace the fan?

 

I'd first suggest giving the notebook a good clean inside - after many years of use you can find huge dust build ups inside; often this is the source of issues with fans.

 

what qualifies as "inside"? i'm assuming this would require some disassembly. know where i can find docs on how to do it?

 

On the Dell website here: http://support.euro.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins1300/en/sm/index.htm

Inside means taking the back cover off and having a look at the fan and elsewhere. Bet it's caked in dust, they normally are after some use.

 

Well I have the same problem and the best thing to do is change the cooling fan, if you need to take everything apart in order to clean the cooling fan area, why not just get a new one? the problem is that is kinda hard to do it for us that haven never done it, you have to take everything apart and I mean everything. I'm thinking of doing it, actually I started the other day but I'm afraid to break something, like when trying to disconnect the keyboard, is hard and I don't want to pull it hard. I know there is a way to disconnect it and its easy, I just need to find a way to do it.

My cooling fan started doing that noise months ago and its getting worse now, the other day it quit working for a while and it made my cpu to work at 100 all the time, until it started to work again then my computer was back to normal.

 

do you know where to get a replacement cooling fan?

 

It depends how much you want to pay for it, you can get it from Ebay for around 20 dlls or pay more by ordering it from dell website