My laptop fan is running more than usual

Started about a week ago, I can not get any peace on my computer with out the fan running some sort of annoying cycle. Starts on start-up and runs a few different cycles like, it will run real soft for maybe 10 mins, stop, start again for another 10 mins, or it will run really hard for 10 to 20 secs, stop, in about a minute or 30 seconds it will start up again.

Right now I'm doing a virus scan so its running a little hard and been continuing for the paste hour. making my laptop hot in that area and on this one spot on my laptop.

Now big question is, what's causing this? Could it be the cold temp. in my house?

I have a HP Compac Presario c700 In case anyone is good at researching this.

Help Wanted :(

What is causing the the fan to speed up is the cpu is working hard scanning for the nasties and when was the last time the air portds where cleaned out?

Now it thaqt is a P 4 cpu, hot is normal when they are working. CPU warms up, fan speed increases to get rid of the excess heat. Normal, exactly what it should do.

Remember HEAT is enemy #1 of computers.

um, I don't recall ever cleaning out the air ports?

May even need to take it in and getting that inside cleaned up then.

Shut it down, close the top and tip that thing where you can look into teh ports. More than oince I have seen them blocked. No airflow through the laptop equals overheating.

hmm, I can't really look at them, like I can see the fan, but it's hard to tell if anything is wrong with it, but I'm sure they need to be cleaned,

A reason to get a good tight beam flashlight then.

Actually had to test teh airflow from fans, got a shoch as to how little junk on the blades can just about kill the airflow. < shudder >

In addition to restricted airflow, another suspect for overheating PCs is that some process is working the CPU harder than normal.

The easiest way to check this would be to wait until your virus scan is finished, reboot and wait until the over heating/excessive fan running begins. Then check the Task Manager to see if anything is using a lot of CPU time. You can access the Task Manager by right clicking the Taskbar. (The photo is what my Task Manager is doing currently.)

Oh thanks HAN I didn't think to check my task bar when the fan is running, I did once but didn't really check the CPU,

it's running very soft right now, when it speeds up again I'll check that!!