HP Pavilion a810n fan problem

I bought the Pavilion a810n back in June. With the exception that it seems
to not allow using a second SATA drive, it's been a pretty good machine.
I've added another 512 meg of RAM, a usb drive for storage, ATI Radeon
graphics card & TV card. All working quite well. And I repartitioned the
SATA drive to dual boot XP & SUSE linux (64 bit version). Everything runs
well with one exception. Recently, the fan started making grinding noises
starting up when the machine has been off. Letting it run for a few
minutes, then shutting down & restarting would usually fix it. On
occassion, I'd then let the machine stay running to avoid further noise
problems. I did that Tuesday, but when I came home, the fan had gotten
consistently noisier, although not anywhere near as bad as a dead start.
And that didn't change with my usual shutdown & restart procedure.

I'm suspecting that the fan may be going. I'm not familiar with the
motherboard, so I don't know if the fan will stay running this way for a
long time or die fairly soon. And, if the fan dies, will temperature
sensors halt the system or will it just keep running, although hotter?
Does anyone else here have similar experiences?

Bill K

Sounds very much like the bearings in the cooling fan may have accumulated dust
and dirt. The noise is not a good sign.

One short term possibility is to get a can of compressed air and blast air onto
the fan when the system is not running. If that makes the noise go away, you
are OK for a while. Otherwise, I would look to replace the fan.

Check your warranty from HP. If still in warranty (or even if not), get the fan
replaced. Third-party cooling fans, either on top of the processor heat sink or
attached to the inside of the chassis, are often just as good or better than
HP's. If the fan is attached to the processor heat sink, replace the entire
unit.

Don't mess with fans and ventilation. Heat is the worst enemy of a computer,
even more so than dust and dirt... Ben Myers

On Wed, 16 Nov 2005 05:16:21 GMT, Bill Kraski
<> wrote:

>I bought the Pavilion a810n back in June. With the exception that it seems
>to not allow using a second SATA drive, it's been a pretty good machine.
>I've added another 512 meg of RAM, a usb drive for storage, ATI Radeon
>graphics card & TV card. All working quite well. And I repartitioned the
>SATA drive to dual boot XP & SUSE linux (64 bit version). Everything runs
>well with one exception. Recently, the fan started making grinding noises
>starting up when the machine has been off. Letting it run for a few
>minutes, then shutting down & restarting would usually fix it. On
>occassion, I'd then let the machine stay running to avoid further noise
>problems. I did that Tuesday, but when I came home, the fan had gotten
>consistently noisier, although not anywhere near as bad as a dead start.
>And that didn't change with my usual shutdown & restart procedure.
>
>I'm suspecting that the fan may be going. I'm not familiar with the
>motherboard, so I don't know if the fan will stay running this way for a
>long time or die fairly soon. And, if the fan dies, will temperature
>sensors halt the system or will it just keep running, although hotter?
>Does anyone else here have similar experiences?
>
>Bill K

Ben Myers wrote:

> One short term possibility is to get a can of compressed air and blast air
> onto
> the fan when the system is not running. If that makes the noise go away,
> you
> are OK for a while. Otherwise, I would look to replace the fan.

Well, at this point, the noise level has diminished (right now,
nonexistent). While I was getting varying noise, I left the side panel
off& gotten down next to the box to locate which ofthe thre fans the noise
is coming from (cpu cooler, rear panel & power supply). It turns out the
power supply fan is the offender. Since that's not replacable without
changing the power supply, could I just add an extrnal fan by the power
supply fan opening?

Bill K