I have a 17" G4 Powerbook with a very noisy fan. It started about 9 months ago after installing a VPC upgrade, and continues now when ever I do anything processor intensive. The fan kicks on, gets very loud and seems to work sputter. After downloading a temperature monitor and seeing the processor bottom-side temp reach it's upper limit, I quickly quit what I was doing and shut down. After restart, temp runs at nominal until I do something requiring horsepower.

Now, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to deduct that a failing fan is the culprit, but I am not familiar with electronics much past the "plug-it-in part". Any additional thoughts before I replace the fan assembly? Any thing to be aware of before I start the fan install - from those experienced?

This machine is my livelihood, and although I have good backups, any thoughts to avoid as much downtime as possible will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

If you haven't worked with laptops before, make sure you are extra careful. There are a lot of fragile cables and parts in there and one slip up can be costly.

You do have to go fairly far into the machine to get to the fan assembly so make sure you have a good take-apart manual. Also, one tip when you get to taking out the main logic board on those... the thermal compound can hold on real tight to the underside of that board, so it can be helpful if you give it a couple of passes with a heat gun to loosen the bond a bit.

Okay, so maybe this is a little beyond my doing. I am fairly competent with building computers, but have not done much inside a laptop. Any other suggestions? Do you think the fan is my problem?

Thanks.

From your description it sounds like the fan, but there is always the possibility of it being something major like the logic board. I would just ship the machine to us for diagnosis or find another professional to look at it.

Justin, I appreciate your staying with me. I think you're probably right about me sending it in, but I have a question: If I can overnight my pb, could the repair be scheduled for same day and over-nighted back?

Even if I could give up the pb for more than a day or two- on a personal level - from a professional level, I can not. It would be worth the overnight expenses if PBM has a scheduling system that would make this doable.

Thanks.

Currently, we wouldn't be able to. Repair time is around 48 hours at the moment. So it would be around 4 days out of your hands.