Hi--I have an older Gateway M675 laptop. All of a sudden, I boot it up and all is going well for about 1 min and then this incredible grinding noise starts. I am guessing that it is in the ventilation area. I have opened the back of my laptop, blew canned air, but it still sounds terrible. I have stopped using it bec/ I am afraid I might blow all my info up! The bottom of the laptop also gets very hot.

Do I need a new ventilation fan? Where do I get one? It looks like it would be easy to install if that is the problem.

Thanks for any information or help.
Linda

is it a grinding like sticking a pencil in a fan? or is it more of a Hum sound?

does it always wait about a minute before making the noise?

The waiting a minute thing kinda throws me off because if it was a fan it would start as soon as you turned the computer on. you may want to take it to a technician and have him open it up for you.

im thinking hard drive or fan

I think it's the hard drive. if it where a fan it would start as soon as it was turned on and not after it warmed up which leads me to believe hard drive. In this case this is very bad and normally means that your HDD is about to die i would back up your data now...