how to confirm fans are functioning on laptop?

I recently acquired a secondhand laptop, an HP Pavilion cz5500 (ze5568cl). It seems to run a bit hot, and the hard drive is failing.

The laptop has 3 fans... two on the bottom, and one that blows out the back. In my testing I've never seen the rear fan turn on (I've let the cpu get up to about 60C).

Any ideas on how to test this fan without opening up the case? I can't find any utility that will display the fan speed (speedfan and HWMonitor don't show any fans).

Thanks!
Justin

 

You might try looking in BIOS - most desktop setups show fan speeds, so maybe your laptop's will...

 

Unfortunately the BIOS does not show the fan speed. It is the latest downloadable version of the BIOS. Thanks for the idea though.

 

60C seems high enough for the fan to start, if it's a temp-trigger kind of thing...maybe power down, physically turn the fan with a pencil or pick of some kind, see if you can tell if it's binding...

 

It feels fine when turning it by hand.

The computer has three fans. One spins all the time, and another turns on when the cpu temperature rises. The third fan (in question) is smaller than the other two. I don't know what triggers it... possibly hard drive or gpu temperature. I've taken the hard drive up to around 50C, but I've never pushed the gpu, and don't have any way of measuring it's temperature.