Fan broken?

I have had a 173x-fx for about a year and a half and last night, it randomly shut down several times. I have had overheating problems with other laptops in the past so I assumed this was the problem. I blew compressed air in to clear out dust and even put it near an open window, but it kept happening, so I left it overnight to cool off. I have a cooling pad with two fans and am currently using the laptop while monitoring temps with HW monitor. I think the only reason it isnt shutting down is because i have the cooling pad going and the window open(its colder today than it was last night). I called gateway and they said that there were no bios updates and that i should order a new fan to have someone install. My question is, Is there any way to definitely know if my fan is working or if my computer is experiencing another problem?


All temps in celcius
HDD Temp-50
GPU-74
Processor-Core 1-66 Core 2 -67

 

I would use one of the two ears you were given at birth to listen for it.
There are _2_ fans in your laptop, and they are positioned pretty far apart from each other. Shouldn't be rocket science figuring out which one is dead, if any are at all.

 

I just put my ear to the bottom of the laptop near the fans and also put my hand next to them to feel for air flow, it appears that the fan located on the left hand side of the laptop is not working. Now that I have determined that, How do I go about getting a replacement and getting that replacement installed/is it easy enough to do myself even if i have no experience?

Also my GPU is now getting into the mid-high 80s even when doing little to nothing, so the fan has to be the problem.

 

Yeah, if you hear nothing I wouldn't run the laptop that long without the fan.
It's pretty simple to replace them, although I have never done it these laptops appear a lot easier to work on than my past laptop. (Non Unibody MBP)

Print off the thread at the top of the Gateway forums and you'll see what you have to do step A to Z. (Titled FX series disassembly or something similar)

 

If you take your time you should be able to do the fan replacement your self.

With a digital camera take few photos when you're dismentling your laptop. Those photos should help you remembring the location of all the cables/bits

 

Well I am on the gateway site looking for what part i would need, and its sending me to these other websites, none of which mention anything about fans. How do I figure out what I need even?

 

ebay!

There should be a sticker on the top of the fan (or possibly on the top of the heatsink) with the fan's model number.

 

Yeah it wasn't not knowing where to get it, it was finding out what specifically I needed. I was hoping someone who had already taken theirs apart would know what model number or whatever, but I guess I'll just do it myself. Thanks.