dell laptop problem - noise / heat

fizzy

i bought a dell inspiron 5150 laptop just over a year ago, with a year's warranty. i've had a continuing problem with it of late and am clueless when it comes to hardware etc so would appreciate some general advice on this.

everything was fine with the laptop until april when it started making lots of noise. within a few minutes of turning it on, the fan would go into overdrive and stay there - regardless of how few apps i was running etc.

dell took it back and replaced the fan. everything was fine again for a few weeks but in mid may, the problem returned. this time, it was more intermittent and the laptop would become very hot as well as noisy.

dell took it back and replaced the fan again. i used it for a few short spells when i got it back at the end of may and it seemed ok. i've been out of action for the last couple of weeks and only started using my laptop again a couple of days ago and guess what? the problem is back again

this time, it's more like it was the first time i.e. it will kick in if you leave it on long enough and the noise won't stop once it starts. sometimes it gets hot and sometimes it doesn't. but it's always *very* noisy.

i'll be on to dell tech support about this on monday, and since it's now a few days out of warranty i figure i'll need to pay up. i don't know much about laptops but it seems to me that the original issue was never properly resolved so i should not have to pay but regardless of who foots the repair bill, i am not confident about them fixing it. i assume they will suggest doing the same thing for the 3rd time - replacing the fan - but that does not seem to fix things!

could the problem be with another component instead?

should i:
-pay dell to look into it?
-pay someone else to fix it (who?)
-sell my laptop cheap and get a new one?

sorry for such a long post and thanks in advance

Sparky

The temperature sensor, could be on its last legs of life, that could be the problem. or there could be some process in the background of your OS causing the CPU to work harder thus causing the fan to come on.