Recently, as of last week, during normal operation of my laptop, I hear a faint clicking sound whenever the CPU fan starts up, I can hear the fan starting up then the clicking starts, this happens every couple of minutes and is making me very worried as this is my primary computer, I have a desktop Windows 98 machine and I have no clicking on it. I'm afraid to open it up since I am not very good disassembling laptops as opposed to desktops and this is my primary system and I don't want to mess it up by opening it up and finding there was nothing I saw in there. Is the CPU fan going to break down or something? I know it's not the hard disk because I can get into windows and such and even MS-DOS via floppy and I have no major problems running the system other than the fan. Or would the fan be dusty or is it nothing to worry about? Also, a the back end where the CPU is, isn't really as hot as it used to be. I would think this is good but I don't know. It used to be hot to the touch now it's warm and this is after 5+ hours of use. Thanks, Faris,

I don't think anyone here can be definite about the possible outcome, computers are way too fickle. You might get away with it, you might not. The only way is to look inside but I appreciate laptops are not the easiest boxes to take apart. If you do go inside make sure you clean all the dust out (vents/fans/CPU heat sink) while you are at it. DerekW

And be careful. You can create more problems than you can solve working inside a laptop with no experience.