July 30th, 2007  
Riddar
Byte

Posts: 66
Country: United States
Microchips: 169
Gadgets


Ugh, my friend has a Dell Laptop which was crashing all the time lately. No warnings, no error messages, just hangs and crashes. Turns out that the cooling fan stopped dead, hasn't been spinning in weeks; any CPU usage above about 20% led to an overheat.

For what it's worth, no long term damage! But makes me think an aftermarket cooler might be a bit safer.