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Question

Laptop fan won't spin when touching metal on laptop.

Sep 12, 2017 3:48PM PDT

Laptop fan works fine when I hold it but stops working when I place it down into the laptop. I found that when the metal fan casing touches any metal on the laptop it just stops spinning. The laptop is an msi ge70 2pe. Any ideas on how to fix this or even about what's causing this?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
For this, I'd use thin plastic.
Sep 12, 2017 3:55PM PDT

I'm not going to lie here but if I only had what you told me to work with I'd get some non-conductive film plastic and insulate the metal so there is no electrical path to short out the fan. I can't guess why the owner took this apart and I can't find a service manual to see if there is some missing parts.

But I could fix that given the story.

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Sorry
Sep 13, 2017 3:06AM PDT

Sorry about the lack of info. The reason I opened up the system was to replace the fan as the old one wouldn't spin at all. After placing the new one in it worked well for about 2 weeks then It stopped spinning. I took it out to see if the blades were stuck on anything and that didn't seem to be the case

When I put the fan back in I noticed it would sort of try to start spinning but fail to actually spin. Then I did something stupid and turned the laptop on while the fan was plugged in but not set in place. It worked perfectly.

I noticed that it was the metal of the vents and screw sockets that was causing it because an soon as it touched that it stopped spinning. As far as I know there are no parts missing, all I've ever Done is replace the fan. I have also tested the old fan and that doest spin at all.

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Here's another old tech trick.
Sep 13, 2017 8:48AM PDT

If I needed to insulate the screws I replace the metal screws with plastic or nylon screws. In one case we used a just right size zip tie to hold it all together without shorting.

To really fix this, well yes, but could require a new motherboard to nail it but in my view, this is when creativity fattens the wallet.