I had a fan fail in a similar manner, it took a while to sort out what
was causing the smell. I never had any problem with the computer
crashing, it kept on running even though the power supply fan had
stopped. I replaced the fan and its been running ever since. The power
supply is now about 6+ years old and the original fan failed after about
2 years. The computer runs almost 24-7 so its doing well. The
replacement fan I bought is I suspect somewhat better quality than the
original.

wrote:

I have a Compaq Presario 6010 us about 2-1/2 yrs old. It has XP home
-sp2, 736 mb ram, 40 GB hd, 1.4 ghz cpu.
Several days ago It suddenly went dead, no blue screen- power was off .
It rebooted right away but crashed again in a few minutes. I smelled
something like hot phenolic material. After a little checking I found
that the power supply fan was not working. I gave it a little nudge and
it spun up. Now it quits occasionally, even if it's on in sleep mode
overnight and I have to reboot. Ordinarily I'd just get a new fan and
install it but years ago I had the same problem with a different
computer. After I'd put in 3 new fans I found that the problem was low
voltage from the power supply. Before I go and buy a Compaq power
supply or fan I'd like to determine exactly what the problem is. When
I'm using the computer I"ve noticed that the fan sometimes turns of
then on later. I moderated the fan voltage with my multimeter and found
that the voltage would drop to about 4.5v and the fan would stop. Later
the voltage would rise at about 1 v per minute until it got to 10.5 v
and the fan would restart.The fan seemed to bind a little so I squirted
in a little penetrating oil. It freed up but it still sometimes crashes
overnight. Does the power supply have some sort of heat sensor that
regulates the fan speed according to temp or is the PS going bad? The
voltage it feeds to the other hardware is satisfactory. I've never paid
any attention to this until I started having troubles.
Any ideas?
Engineman