This tiny little Tribble was responsible for launching my fan - and nearly killing my beloved MacBook!

So, was using my MacBook today and I noticed that there was a strange ticking sound coming from what sounded like the left-hand side, near the power cable.

At first I thought the HDD was on its way out (God knows, the bashing my MacBook has taken its due to die any day) but a quick look at the back revealed the HDD is on the opposite side – so it wasn’t that.

So – off to Google.  I found plenty of references on Google to the problem, but replies varied greatly from the deeply irritating ‘take it to an Apple Store and get it repaired under warranty, dude’ (well, A: I’m out of warranty and B: Apple Genius Bar is frankly a joke) to others who had had just about every bit of their MBP replaced and still not solved it.  And of course, plenty of posts from people saying ‘oh, it’s the Hard Drive’ when it clearly ISN’T (I do despair sometimes at peoples stupidity).

Well, I decided to simply ignore it as there wasn’t much I could do about it.  About an hour later, I picked my lap pie up and – blimey!  It’s red hot!  Why hasn’t the fan come on?  Oh wait – hmm, maybe I have just found out what the mysterious clicking is?

So, mini screwdriver at the ready I took the back off the MacBook.  It only takes a couple of minutes, dead easy.  The fan is smack bang i the centre.  So I tried turning it – jammed.

So that was why!  Another minute later I undid the 3 screws which hold the fan in, only to find a huge, impacted wad of fluff blocking the poor things airways!  I swiftly removed it and took a look at the fan.  Carefully and slowly rotating it, it popped back onto its pivot and began to spin freely again.  Could it be I’ve fixed it?  I re-assembled the lap pie and turned her on expectantly.

No clicking! A few minutes later the fan started merrily blowing again.  Job done!

So there you go.  If you have an odd clicking form your laptop which seems to be coming from the left, this could be the answer you are looking for!