Thursday, October 27, 2011

How I fixed a rattling laptop fan

So my laptop fan started rattling recently. First I thought it might be my hard drive that was about to give up, so I was kind of glad it was "just" the fan. Until the noise of the fan started to drive me slightly insane. My first attempt of silencing the fan was a failure. I opened up my laptop and cleaned out all the dust in the fan and the vents. I also checked if there any loose pieces of something in the fan, but didn't find anything. After putting the laptop back together again it didn't take long for the fan to start making noise again.

So yesterday evening I opened up my laptop again, about a month after my initial try. I took it one step further this time, I removed the fan completely and disassembled it up til the point where I had the fan blades removed from the housing. After cleaning everything as good as possible I  put a drop of oil (for sewing machines) on the spindle where the fan blades sit. When I had put everything back togheter I could verify that my laptop now indeed was quiet as a mouse. And yes before you ask, the fan i still working.

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of this but hopefully it's quite easy to understand anyway. If you don't please just ask and I will try to give you an answer.