Shoutbox

Today I opened the case for the first time, and I cleaned around a bit. I didn't have compressed air, so I just cleaned the most obvious parts with one of those special tissues that don't leave little pieces (dry).

Anyway, I didn't unplug anything, but I did remove the fan box and tried to clean it inside. After discovering that the fan itself was innaccessible, I closed the box and put it back on the socket.

I somewhat cleaned the little Intel fan without removing it, and closed everything. I plugged everything back, sat back, took a deep breath and turned the PC on.

Right away, I heard a small clicking noise coming from the tower, but I was not sure if it was the fan. After a minute, it stopped making that noise. The fan itself was working, and I instantly noticed it wasn't making so much noise as before.

But the BIOS gave me a "CPU Fan Error! Press F1 to resume" message.

I pressed F1, and went into my OS without problems. But I was a bit worried about the message. I restarted again, and again the message was there, but everything seemed to work fine.

Then I had the idea of turning on the Hardware Sensor applet in GNOME, and got a nasty surprise, the temperature was 110C! Right away, the computer shut down.

So I unplugged everything, opened the case, and while the main fan was fine, the Intel fan was very hot (but not enough to burn much at the touch). I didn't see anything melted, so I just left the case open and let it cool off.

Right now, I'm not sure what I should do. I still have to wait an hour to call a tech guy, but meanwhile maybe someone knows what I did wrong.

I'm on my old laptop now, I'm not sure I want to try to turn on the computer again.