Within the last couple of weeks I finally got some canned air for the computers. Both my laptop and the desktop were having heat related problems.
Desktop, it was a new problem, just started whizzing out. I cleaned of the heatsink with a tool and that improved it until I could get the pressurized air in there. Once I blew it out, I watched the temp via the bios utlities and saw it improved, but was still hotter than desired. I blew it more and that helped. Now I have a small fan aimed inside the chassis of the PC and it keeps good temp now. Not too hot even when running heavily and constant.
Laptop, that started going bad last year … vaio shutdown problem. It gets worse and worse as time goes on.
Well I had the canned air, so I decided to see what I could do. I blew air in here and there and this and that and the machine still shut down constantly.
I took more parts off of it. Not recommended for y’all unless inclined to know how to fix and put back together 🙂
My laptop is half-dead, if you aren’t familiar with my laptop, and you can find my posts about it on this blog. It’s went through a major crisis just over a year ago when two of my children poured a Coke on the keyboard while I was in the garden.
Keyboard is unplugged, touchpad and mouse keys are unplugged.
I’m very familiar with the innerds of my laptop because of the Coke Spill Incident. That voided the warranty so I have no reason not to open it up ever since. The keyboard piece I have sitting on top, but not screwed down. There’s no point in it anymore. The laptop stays put, and is hot, so any extra air openings are useful 😉
What I did earlier was to clean install Win XP with my OEM disc. So the harddrive is fresh and nice. The shutdowns kept coming, so that’s when I started using the canned air to see what I could do, if anything.
I was half convinced I needed a repair done, but the other half said maybe not.
My testing has shown that it has a 90% chance of NOT needing a repair. That’s a bonus great thing from a can of air.
I took the keyboard off, and the other holddown thingies and I took out the DVD/CD-RW-ROM drive, the battery, and the harddrive.
I blew air in from every possible angle, and then again and again, and again, and again. Don’t recall seeing any prolific baby-dust bunnies come out, but in a laptop, guess anything can be the culprite, a teeny-weeny-dust bunny even.
In any case, got the pieces back together, and VOILA! It works. It doesn’t turn itself off anymore. Really. That’s miraculous.
So if you have a laptop, at least remove all the remove-able parts and get that needlenose attachement on the pressurized can of air and blast away every direction that you can. Keep your machine happy by doing this PREVENTATIVELY.
If a machine is running without good airflow around it, and perhaps in a hot space (like a house with no a/c as we are this summer), you need to clean the machine more often, and put a fan aimed at a crucial space.
Like our desktop, I don’t have the sides on it at all. It sits inside a Computer cabinet next to the monitor and I can feel how warm it is just where I type. My plan is to get cool gizmo’s inside, extra fans, better heatsink/fan, and pretty blue colored everything, including cable cozies — things that wrap around cables to keep them neat, and keep airflow from being impeded. Then and only then, will the sides go back on.
One kit exists that I also want, to cut the side open for a window to see into that beautiful PC interior. More lights around that. A blue glowing beauty! Blue feet under it too. That’s not what I have. I have none of this. It’s a future plan.