i've had this shitty laptop for years now. My mom bought it to check email with on the go and for some reason (I forgot) she didn't want it and gave it to me. I used it for about 3 years and in that time I've probably wiped/re-installed various OSs over 200 times. i've had the HDD replaced twice through the warranty because they died on me ect. So now its 2012 and its still chuggin along. I have it hooked up to my 55" TV through HDMI out and I use it as a dedicated netflix streaming PC/media PC where friends can plug in their flash drives and we can watch movies ect. A few days ago the main PC fan started grinding/making more noise than it should. So I take it apart and clean everything out, using more Q-tips than I probably should mention. So half a quart of ISO and 300 Q-tips later I clean out lots and lots of dust and gunk. (Haven't cleaned it since I got it.) I bent the casing around the fan upwards so it wouldn't grind against teh case anymore (Not sure why it randomly started doing this in the first place after 5 years) and it seemed to clear the problem up... But now 2 hours later after cleaning it, every 5-6 minutes or so I hear the fan grinding for about 15 seconds. whats the problem/what should I do? Theres no warranty anymore... and I literally can't get to the fan without taking everything out (This laptop design is ridiculous.)
Its maybe just a wire hitting a fan. I had this problem forever, would always randomly get loud and hear the wire rubbing, one day i realized what the fuck it was and taped the wire down lol. I cant get what this if for though now? I thought you said its main PC. Is the main PC the laptop? If so idk know man... teach it whats good with a sledge hammer and pick axe. maybe even a nail gun. lol (lol i can actually post something like this in this section right? thats not violence if its not a human ey)
It could just be the fan dieing. Like jumbo said make sure nothing is hitting the fan, also try to give power to it when it's not in the laptop to see if it is just the fan itself.