Finally fixed my broken fan.

I love my Samsung NC10 Netbook, I really do. I put in a 500Gb drive, upgraded the ram to 2Gb and put in a FM transmitter and Mini SD card reader. I’ve opened it so many times its missing half the screws… But it has, or rather had, a rather annoying problem. A few months ago the fan started to occasionally make some noise. It got louder and louder and I took it apart to blow the dust out a few times but it was still noisy.

Finally last week it stopped turning altogether. I had already been to a couple of local store here in Costa Rica to see if I could get a replacement part. They told me to try e-bay… At least on e-bay the replacements were only £14-24, getting a new one from a site in the UK would be £50… That’s 1/6 the cost of the unit, and its only a year old!

I had a crappy fan blowing air at the back of it but Melissa (my new gf) and I wanted to head to Nicaragua tomorrow for the weekend, so this wasn’t a good solution. I took it apart again, removed the fan/heatsink and blasted it with WD-40. I was barely turning at all. I tried finding how the fan attached to the heatsink and gave it a knock which led to the fan disconnecting entirely.

It seems the fan is only really attached by the force of the magnets in the moving part and presumably this was full of dust and gunk, slowing and eventually stopping the fan. I blasted the inside with more oil, wiped off the excess, put it back together and … it now works!!

Try this before you send yours to the repair place or pay £50 for a new fan!