Cooling fan of SZ260/P stopped working

My SZ260 of 3 years is having issues now. It has worked beautifully but recently it has shown signs of failing on me. Not good. First, there's the battery issue of it not recognizing the battery.. now it's the fan issue.

The cooling fan has ceased to work. I've done lots of searches and for some it seemed like a software issue. I don't think it's a software issue for me because I haven't changed any system settings/software to trigger its failure. I've also read that it may be a hardware issue and unfortunately, there are quite a few people who seem to have the same fan issue as me.

My question is, has anybody on this forum had this issue and if so, how did you fix it? Or what are you going to do to fix it? I am thinking of ordering the fan on ebay and replacing it myself. It is a daunting task since the only way to replace the fan is to completely disassemble the laptop, but I'm pretty savvy and should be ok with it. I have been hesitant to order the part on ebay because I'm not sure if it's the correct part for the SZ260/P. I can't seem to find the part number for the fan either, so if anybody has that, i would appreciate it.

Thanks for reading.

 

I can't speak from personal experience whether this is accurate (although I may soon since my SZ480's fan sounds like it is about to die), but check this out: http://www.tribloom.com/?p=29

Good luck.