This morning my sony vaio nw20 serirs started making a kind of screeching noise from the fan area, it has not been dropped or damaged in anyway and stated with no warning

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Have you been using any high end programs (like PhotoShop, or some video editing software) lately?
If not, your case is most likely full of dust. Get a can of air, and clean it out.
Also make sure all of the vents are open.
Hope that helps,
Forest

If it sounds like a plastic helicopter, them you have a problem with the heat (which probably melted the area around the fan, not the fan itself) that comes from leaving it on a non-hard surface. You should never have it on a bed or blanket or carpet for more than 10 min. But anyways, you will either want to take it to a repair shop (don't let them **** you around though, make sure THEY know that YOU know that it's only 15 minutes of work to fix) or you can go buy a new one. I had the same problem with a Compaq that had dual processors. I could practically cook an egg with it, but i actually ended up having to cut and reshape the ports for the heat to escape better (and to make the helicopter noise stop). So if you have ANY know-how at all and can do it yourself, or you husband, son, wife maybe? just guessing here... Anyway what i was trying to say is it would be about 10 times cheaper to have someone fix it unprofessionally. But that is only if it's making the helicopter noise. I really should have had you clarify before i started typing i guess.

this is a heat problem. try blowing the fan vent and all opening with air. a air compressor does this well. if you don't have one you can buy dust remove in a can.(same thing but compressed air in a can) they also sell a fan plate you can put under the laptop at walmart. (around 15 dollars) i use one on my laptop. i used Velcro to keep together. the fan plate uses a usb port to power it on. hope this helps and please rate. thank you.

The fan makes noise in high preformance windows like windows vista&7. So it is normal, because the windows uses motherboard,ram and graphics card with high preformance so they get hotter, so the fan get stronger to cool them or they will be damaged.
This noise also exist in windows xp, but only when opening high graphics game, or being working with the laptop for along time.

no its not exactly a HD failure u need to remove the keyboard and look if something is stucking in ur fan...there might be the possibility of dust in it and even a minute thing can damage a lot..
cheerrss...pls rate..

Hi:
Not sure of a user cause for the fan to run full speed, unless you are using the laptop in a high heat environment, or setting it on a bed or other area where it is not getting adequet cooling air. If it does it right away, when you turn it on , cold, then there might be a laptop hardware problem. If you leave your laptop on all the time, then you might be inducing the problem. I had a HP high performance laptop, that the fans would not turn on at all till it ran an hour or so, then they would stay on loud for 10 or 15 minutes, then shut off, then cycle.

take it to an expert... the fan is faulty

Its just dirty, clean it the best you can and make sure it has space to breathe

The fan's bearings are probably going bad, or there may be some object that was sucked in to cause the noise.