Simply put, the Gateway md2614u laptop will refuse to continue past POST unless you have a perfectly working fan connected.
Basically my father accidentally made the fan spin too fast when he used an air compressor on it to clean it out which resulted in it not spinning up properly when you boot the laptop. Interestingly, the fan did actually still spin, but just at a considerably slower speed (perhaps at its slowest speed?)
But that apparently didn’t matter - if your fan wasn’t perfectly working, it’s no OS for you! The POST screen complains that the fan isn’t functioning properly and gives you no other option but to shut down.
This is actually pretty normal for all motherboards. Most bios have a setting to disable CPU fan detection, because not all waterblocks and pumps output PWM data. However some motherboards do not have this setting in bios, especially on laptops.
The issue is if the fan may no longer be able to cool the CPU, or be drawing to much power. Also the fan could freeze up, and do worse.
As in back when you were connecting case fans to 4 pin Molex, I had a case fan melt and catch fire. Its one of the reasons I switch to Noctua PWM fans, so the computer knows if something is wrong.
Yup in this case I would strongly recommend replacing the fan if you can source the part.
I still think this kind of thing totally belongs here because it’s the kind of stuff vendors are going to be saying, “wait, real users do stuff like that?” YES, WE DO. Hell, I replace parts like fans in laptops and I’m legally blind. How? iFixit guides. And a very nice magnetic screw mat.
Notice I am saying its industry standard, not that it is good standard! I wish you could grab standard fan sizes and throw them in. I get the shrouds and mounting being weird, but there is little reason to have nonstandard connectors and weird sizes!
Lets just say I love the steam deck for dumping most of its parts on iFixit, and I will be getting framwork laptops going forward for nearly the same reason. Fans die…I want to be able to replace them!
I’m a bit late to revisit this thread, but I did actually replace the fan and the laptop then “just worked”.
The problem is that I didn’t know if the laptop even worked correctly because it straight-up wouldn’t let me go anywhere until I replaced the fan.
This is actually one thing HP does right - it complains about a non-functioning fan but also says to press any key to continue, otherwise it automatically shuts down in like 15 seconds or something.
And when you do press a key to continue, sure enough, it then boots into the OS. This is extremely useful on my HP DM1 which uses a CPU so low power (AMD E-350) that it can run completely passively just by being underclocked to around 70% of its clockrate speed in combination with a corresponding undervolt. But, like 99.99% of all laptops, you need to use software within the OS to actually apply any sort of underclock or undervolt.
And a very nice magnetic screw mat.