wow, laptop maintanance tip!

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Schmidi
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wow, laptop maintanance tip!

Post by Schmidi » Tue May 24, 2005 3:15 pm

Whats up all, I was having random shutoff problems with my Toshiba Satellite and thought I'd throw this out there cause it worked like a charm.
Basically my laptop would auto shut down as a preventative heat measure within minutes of starting certain music apps, or especially games.
So I did a little searching and was all set to open the whole chassis up and clean it all out as others were having the same problem on another forum.
Someone suggested that they simply vacummed the fan ports and heat sink and it fixed their problem.

...so I vacummed the fan ports for a good 10 minutes (TURN THE POWER OFF ON LAPPY FIRST or youll kill the fans) and man was it dirty inside. Then I opened the heatsink cover and vac'd the last dust bunnies up and voila!
LIke a new computer guys, the fans almost never even engage and with the new hard drive I added (fujitsu 80 gig, 5400 rpm completely silent!!) This machine is like new and ultra silent!

Hope that helps anyone out and I'm sure it is applicable to more than just Toshiba's.

elemental
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Post by elemental » Tue May 24, 2005 3:56 pm

be careful. I tried this on my sony VAIO and when I switched it back on nothing happened.... it needed repair anyway, so I sent it off to Sony.

AdamJay
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Post by AdamJay » Tue May 24, 2005 4:03 pm

i used to do this with my HP.
but i liked taking that thing apart just out of boredom.

anyways, getting all that dust out seemed to make the fans kick on and stay on less, since they weren't doing much good with lots of dust on the fans and heatsink.

i didnt use a vacuum tho. just took off the fan face plate and cleaned it and the heatsink with a cotton clothe.

anti-banausic
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Post by anti-banausic » Tue May 24, 2005 4:20 pm

Yeah, this is an important maintenance tip for those out there with big fans on the bottom of their lappy.

I personally remove the cover of the heatsink and use compressed air to blow that out. Then stick a toothpick to stop the fans from rotating and thoroughly blow those out.

Obviously all with the lappy off and un-plugged. I think that some peoples' issues may be solved by just checking for dust build-up. It seems like a pain compared to G4 lappies, but that is the state of the PC laptop world right now (unless you have Centrino).

Cheers.
Macbook c2d 2.0, 2G RAM, 160G HD 5400 RPM, OSX(10.5.5), XP Home, LIVE6, BCR 2000, UC33e, Yamaha P-200, Logic Studio, KRK V6 II

headquest
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Post by headquest » Tue May 24, 2005 10:03 pm

I had the identical problem (P4 laptop dying in action!), and hooveing out the vents proved the solution. I now do this regularly, but have never opened up the laptop...

...is this safe/wise/easy to do?

anti-banausic
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Post by anti-banausic » Tue May 24, 2005 10:49 pm

Depends on the laptop I guess. For me it was just removing a panel on the bottom that revealed the heatsink. Didn't remove the heatsink or anything, just used compressed air to blow it out. That's all. Just don't touch much.

But, yeah, I do this about every 4-6 months.

Keeps my laptop purring.
Macbook c2d 2.0, 2G RAM, 160G HD 5400 RPM, OSX(10.5.5), XP Home, LIVE6, BCR 2000, UC33e, Yamaha P-200, Logic Studio, KRK V6 II

headquest
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Post by headquest » Tue May 24, 2005 11:02 pm

Thanks for the tip. Hoovering from the vents needs doing here quite frequently now, so I'm thinking there's probably a build up of filth on the inside. I'm an a Fujutsu-Siemens Amilo D P4 2.8Ghz model. Thinking of changing to a Centrino laptop next year, partly because of this issue with the fan. (also I think that for Live 4 I should really move up to 1Gb RAM from the 512MB I presently have)

ct43
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Post by ct43 » Wed May 25, 2005 12:07 am

do you recommend I do this even if im not having any problems? As a preventive mesure.

conny
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Post by conny » Wed May 25, 2005 12:27 am

AdamJay wrote:i liked taking that thing apart just out of boredom.
Ah, a serial killer. 8)

// C
PC Laptop Acer, XP Home SP2, build in crappy sound card.
Bleeps and Blops!
http://bluemoose.greatnow.com/

anti-banausic
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Post by anti-banausic » Wed May 25, 2005 3:02 am

Well, I'm not sure that I am in Adamjay's league, where I would just do it for the helluva it, but the best way for me to determine whether or not I need to do it is if I have a fair amount of dust buildup on my fan intakes on the bottom of my laptop.

Given, I have a 17" 3.2 GHz P4 that has three fans on the bottom and they are all intakes, so I have a good idea when they are starting to get gunked up by the amount of dust, so you may have a slightly different situation.

I also use a program to monitor my heat profile. If I have sustained temps around 60 degrees C then I know that I will probably benefit from a little cleaning. I forget what the program is called since I am on another computer right now, but I will post it. It isn't necessarily going to work with all laptops though.....

Cheers.
AB
Macbook c2d 2.0, 2G RAM, 160G HD 5400 RPM, OSX(10.5.5), XP Home, LIVE6, BCR 2000, UC33e, Yamaha P-200, Logic Studio, KRK V6 II

rikhyray
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Post by rikhyray » Wed May 25, 2005 3:44 pm

I can see one fan and it is dirty but I was not able to open the case. Well, done it with all other notbooks I ever had ( some would fall apart almost by themselves), but the Vaio is really too well put together. Which is great, no rattling, nothing loose even after a year but. ... how to open it ???? Anyone having experience ?. I am sure cleaning the fans is a good idea, specially befor the summer.

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