Why is laptop making this noise?

it’s not a good sign. can you pull off the keyboard, and look inside?

I don’t know anything about computers filmfann

It’s hard to tell from your description, but could the fan blade be hitting something? Is it a regular enough noise for that to be it?

I was greatly surprised how complicated dismantling my laptop was. I wouldn’t try it without the service manual specific to your model. Which often can easily be found with Google.

dpworkin is it dangerous to use it without a working fan?

Yes, the heat needs to be dissipated, but if it’s the fan you might be able to move whatever it’s hitting.

No working fan = good chance of frying the computer irreparably, possibly burning the hell out of yourself in the process. For a laptop, that could mean either the thighs or for us guys “poached eggs”.

@jaytkay It varies from model to model. My friends laptop has little buttons to remove the keyboard and is only slightly harder to work on than a desktop whereas my Acer requires three hands and needle-thin fingers to do a complete tear-down so that you can do anything to it. Most are in the middle; my Toshiba has two large access panels on the bottom to get at some things, but I would be hard-pressed to do a full tear-down without a manual.

Agree with everybody. Turn off the computer, let it cool, get an external hard drive, turn it back on again and quickly back up all your data. Then you’re going to have to take it in to be repaired.