I own a new (used) Dell Inspiron 7500 Laptop.
Seems to run fine after a clean install of win2000 pro. My laptop gets warm like all others. But I did notice that the Cpu isn't running (I can see it through the air vent) I know some Cpu fans only run when needed but is there anyway I can test it? I haven't seen it come on once. I would rather test the fan with some program rather than have a burned cpu chip...ya know? Any tips?

You could monitor the temps & RPMs with something like SpeedFan, provided the board is equipped with sensors (although if the fan's not turning, then you already know its RPM)

Beyond that (afaik), there's no real 'test program' for fans beyond measuring their real-time speed

I confess, I haven't had a lot of laptop experience - maybe someone who has will advise

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Well, I'm not sure about Dell's but Toshiba's have diagnostic tools available for them that include a tool to run fan tests. If Dell doesn't have something like that you can check for 3'd party diag software on the web that would allow you to run fan tests.

try this it worked for my dell laptop

http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/index.html