CPU Fan dies - regardless

Ok, before you say the fan is faulty, read on.

I have an Acer which, after booting up, the cpu fan will just...stop spinning. However, the computer will remain ON (ie bios will still be functioning, windows will still run normally etc). The system does not go black, restart or anything..it boots up as normal.

I have replaced the fan, quite a few times, but all is to no avail. I have changed RAM also and same thing.

The fan/s will run for approximately 10-20 seconds before just stopping?

 

Acer what? They make notebooks, netbooks, PCs and more.

How long will the computer keep running after the fan stops? Do the case fans (if this is a PC) keep going? Can you access the drives okay?

My guess at this point is the header - which is part of the motherboard.

 

It is an Acer Aspire PC. Tower.

Usually, the fan will stop about 3 secs after windows (XP) has booted.
If I leave the tower in Bios, about 15 seconds.

I can access drives...for a short time. Not enough to change or do things in windows.

I have tried other hardwares: Ram, HDD, Power, etc...but nothing

Edit: Case fan remains spinning

 

You are not being clear and that does not help us understand the problem. Perhaps I am not asking the right question.

What do you mean, not long enough to do things in Windows? Why? What happens?

It sounds like your system is overheating or has some other problem that is causing it to fail, and the fan stopping is just a symptom.

 

Somewhere in your BIOS you should have a Hardware or Hardware Monitor setting, where you can check the CPU fan setting. The only other thing that comes to mind, though maybe a longshot, is a temperature probe attached to a short two wire cable on the m/board, close to or attached to the CPU heatsink, used to monitor cpu temperature, and controls the fan speed according to temperature. If it's dislodged, then it may shutdown the fan because it's always measuring temps below the minimum necessary to activate the fan.

 

Bill Bright.

within seconds of Xp boot, the mouse cursor freezes in place after the fan
stops. As does the keyboard. (cannot use tab or anything).

Furthermore, as a test to rule out Windows being the issue (which I didn't
think was) I removed the HDD. Nope, fan will still cease spinning.

wat0114,

Is it a possibilitythe board is unusable in this state?

 

Did it ever work?

If it did, then it sounds like the PSU, CPU, or motherboard. I don't think there anything wrong with the fan header.

 

Can you carefully inspect the motherboard components with a bright flashlight to see better? Look for bulging capacitors, maybe they're oozing liquid, burnt components. Picture sample here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

Still, try to navigate through the BIOS and look for CPU fan settings and power supply monitored voltages (Hardware Monitor), that may help narrow down the issue.

http://img47.exs.cx/img47/8043/antectp5505.jpg