I noticed my laptop fan started whirring full-time, and just now I got the blue screen of death stating 'Hardware malfunction....consult vendor'.

I have managed to restart it now, but I have a sense of impending doom about the health of my laptop, and I really do not need this to happen right now. Anyone else had this happen? Please tell me there is a quick, easy and cheap way to fix it. No, actually, you better tell me the truth, even if it is going to be painful.

Apologies if you've already tried this, but have you googled the problem (along with the make and model) in relevant forums? I've fixed my laptop a few times via them (in one case it needed a part replaced and there turned out to be an extended warranty). Although I agree the blue screen of death does not sound good - it's not a DELL is it? I know quite a few (inc mine) suffer from overheating due to a faulty part. Aside from that, just back up everything and then it's not the end of the world (albeit still very crap) if it does go.

Thanks Teek. Google is always my first port of call for every question, and I have had a quick look but I haven't found much to help- often there is too much techy-speak that I don't really understand, or forum posts are very old. I'll seek advice from a uni IT person tomorrow. I was make a shout out to anyone who might have experienced the same thing, so I could gauge what a likely cause/outcome might be. My inner optimist hopes it is something simple like dust clogging up the fan which a bit of spring-cleaning will fix. It'll be a drag if the prognosis is worse.

P.S. no, it's not a Dell- are they known for this problem, or the Blue Screen of Death?

A run of certain Dell models have a faulty component which leads to overheating and requires replacement of the hard drive - thankfully a forum showed me that this was the cause of my own "chopped up screen of death" and Dell replaced mine under extended warranty. The laptop I got from Dell has been nothing but an expensive pain, I wish to God I'd never wasted the best part of a stipend on it!

Hope IT can be more help than me and that yours does turn out to be something simple badgerspy. :-)

Definitely sounds like overheating. Which could fry things if you're not careful. Make sure to back up everything. Could be just the fan that's the problem (ie clogged up) or as teek said could be an niternal part that's causing extra heat. Best of luck with it!

Hey Badgerspy, I hope you were able to get some help from your Uni IT people. I don't have any tips, sorry, and hope I'm not hijacking your thread but I've been worried about the health of my own laptop of late and I'm eager to know if anyone has a model they are particularly happy with that has been less of a pain than most?

buy some 'air in a can' from the computer shop - then clean out the fans etc with it. In the space of a week I have gone through 3 computers (luckily all my own old ones) because they are all having issues with the fans. Hoping this one is ok now! Get a massive external hard drive though and back up everything regularly. I have two 1tb drives that have backups of all my work once a month on them, more often if thesis stuff.

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douple post! (gift)

Thanks for the advice folks, and hijack away Kaymoy, because it may turn out that recommendations for a new model will be useful for me too!

I find that most laptops need replacing in 1-2 years especially if they are used for mobile use rather than just on a desk. I think therefore that any mid-range laptop out there in the evil land of 'pcworld' is usually ok. I've had acer, toshiba, compaq, packard bell and hp laptops and I have never noticed any real benefits of one over the other. I would imagine that a nice £3k sony one would be lovely - I can dream!

if your IT guys can't fix it, you could try a local independent shop, we have one here which has a go at fixing anything, and they are usually successful . They even managed to rescue a whole load of material from a computer that had been pronounced dead by another company for the daughter of someone I work with, which was lucky because it was her 'A' level art coursework. I too have had loads of different makes, it depends what you want them to do really. I've never spent vast sums as I don't want to play games, or do loads of complicated graphic work, but always go for a high memory. If you have got it running follow others advice and back up everything, then at least you will be able to retrieve the stuff - and once you have done that I expect the computer will work as though nothing has happened... until the day you write something magnificent and forget to save it in several different places!

I just had another thought. Over the past couple of weeks, every so often I've seen a tiny white insect, like a termite maybe, crawling around near the top of my laptop screen. The first couple of times I tried to chase him out but he got away, and then I gave up bothering. He pops out for a second, and then disappears again. Perhaps my problem is insects are eating my laptop from the inside!

Hey guys. I have only ever had Acer laptops so can't compare brands but I thoroughly recommend them and Acer have now apparently beaten Sony to the number 1 spot for reliability (according to the guy in PC World!). I replaced my laptop last year as my old one was getting on a bit and was really slow...it sounds a bit mad but it's worth looking at the laptops in Tesco! I went to Currys, PC World, loads of places online etc, and had a look at the spec I could get for my budget, then went to Tesco and found a much better spec for the same price. I then went back to PC World and asked them if they could offer anything competitive and the guy looked at my printout of the spec for the laptop in Tesco and said 'go back to Tesco- we honestly can't offer you that spec for anywhere near that price'. So I did and my new laptop has been fab! You obviously won't get the same sort of choice from a supermarket but if you just want a fairly standard laptop with a decent spec then it's worth a look! KB