Possible fan problem.

Last night my boyfriend dropped his laptop (a dell inspiron 9400) down the stairs When he turned it on everything was fine but we noticed some of the casing around the fan had broken off, we thought it was only superficial damage. We were watching some videos on a site like youtube and when the fan kicked in we noticed that it was incredibly loud (we couldn't hear the laptop anymore) and was slowing the laptop down tremendously. I have searched on the forums and other forums but can't seem to find anything about this anywhere.

Is this just a broken fan issue, or is the thermastat or something else broken?

Thanks a lot for your help.

 

well if you fan is malfunctioning maybe not running at the correct rpm i would suggest maybe not useing the laptop till it gets sorted out because overheating may cause damage. Alsy maybe try cleaning any shards of plastic out the fan that may be stuck in it. Other than that im not sure realy.

 

Sounds like you might have broken the fan off, and it is not providing the optimal amount of airflow, causing your processor to overheat and slow down. Or the fall might have knocked the heatsink (the thing that cools the processor) off the processor, again causing it to overheat and slow down. I would recommend that you have someone look at it and repair/replace anything broken.

 

If its possible i would RMA it and send it back to dell to get it repaired. OR take it to a local shop or if your desperate take it to a best buy and let geek squad take care of it.

 

Thanks for the help.

Unfortunately it's out of warranty and he's a bit broke at the moment, so I think we might open it up and take a look later, see if there is anything obvious. If not, we'll have to fork out for a computer shop I think!