T60 fan dying??

[amm59]

Okay, you'll all have to bear with me because I'm only slightly technologically inclined

I have a T60 Thinkpad, it's probably a little over 2 years old. Today the fan started making horrible noises; I thought the darn thing was gonna blow up! Unfortunately I don't have compressed air so I blew into the fan because I know my room is dusty (I have animals, etc). A TON of dust came out, so I thought, okay, problem solved.

Well, it still kept making the noise, sometimes it would be really awful, sometimes just a little. Then, again, it sounded like it was going to explode. So I turned off my computer, and when I rebooted, I got "Fan Error" numerous times until it finally kicked on again.

Turned it off again, took all the screws out and took apart the laptop to look inside. Nothing seemed amiss (then again, what the heck do I know!). I spun the fan a bunch of times, then put the laptop back together and booted it up. No noise for a while, but now it's back to it's old habits with the noise.

So... I don't know if there's just more dust in there (I will have to buy compressed air) or if the fan is actually dying. I have it on a "low temp" setting in the power monitor because the darn thing tends to get really hot as well. Any tips or tricks? Any thoughts?

Please help a girl out!

[Harryc]

Get a can of compressed air. Remove the keyboard again. Hold the fan blades from spinning with a pencil eraser or similar. Spray the entire fan cavity to remove all dust. Reassemble the laptop. If it still throws a fan error and/or still makes noise you'll have to replace the fan.

[amm59]

thanks. i'll try this as soon as i get the compressed air.

however, now another problem seems to have surfaced. the fan was making the horrible noise again, so i decided i would hibernate the computer because i wouldn't be using it. well, the hibernating screen came on... then disappeared and the computer turned back on to its normal state, as if i hadn't even hibernated it in the first place! now, hibernate isn't even an option anymore! so basically hibernation has disappeared completely from my laptop. grr... what gives?!

[Harryc]

How much free space exists on your hard drive?

[amm59]

Hi Harry,
I forgot I posted this thread (and I'm having another issue regarding my disk space so I came on the forum and just remembered!). The fan has stopped acting skitzo for now. I did get compressed air which helped but didn't solve the problem. But I was able to get hibernation working again and the fan no longer makes the jet plane sound. I still don't think it's 100% but the laptop is under warranty until August so we'll see how it goes.
Now I'm having an issue with disk space (funny you should bring that up). I just posted a thread about it.
Thanks for your help!