[heero_yuy]

My laptop: HP Probook 450 G3. Failing to POST. Said the fan wasn't running. Stripped it down and the fan was trying but then stopping.

Ordered up a new one, fitted it and... exactly the same.

So I decided to take the risk and start the machine up to se if the fan would actually run once the heatsink got warm. Plugged in the keyboard and mouse. Seems then that Windows said it was "resumimg". Turns out I must have wrongly shut the thing down as when the screen came up the media player was still loaded and showing the last thing I watched on the TV plugged into the HDMI.

Anyway after a minute or two as the heat piped heatsink warmed up Lo! the fan came on for a minute and then stopped. It continued to cycle like this. I've shut the machine down and run it up several times now with no POST fail and the fan runs fine.

It was frigging Windows that had "done" something to stop the machine at POST.

Anyhow it's all back together and is running fine. Blasted Microsoft. £25 out of pocket for a fan, tool set and a load of grief because your stupid OS can't handle a sudden shutdown.

At least the tool set is a sound investment for getting things apart.