Anyways, my poor Dell Inspiron M1530's had it rough lately. Overheating, randomly shutting down, making dull roaring noises, stuff like that. From a goddessandguru standpoint, that translates into needless power drainage -- an unspeakable crime, obvi. (Note: the word "obvi" is used here to show, in an amusing way, how totally unqualified the author is to be writing a post like this.)
One cause of overheating in a laptop is the accumulation of dust, especially on the fan. Even though I know next to nothing about computers, I attempted a dissection in the name of science/goddessandguru/the greater good. Here we go...
Before you begin, protect your laptop from damaging static electricity by grounding yourself. Basically, touch a piece of metal.
Now. I found a screwdriver and got to work.
Oh dang, laptop innards. Time to zoom in a bit.
As I suspected, the fan was kind of dirty and nasty. The pictures are awful, I know.
A q-tip wasn't the ideal tool for this procedure...I think you're supposed to use compressed air or something...but for the laygoddess, it sufficed.
Ah, much shinier. Pictures of dust:
My laptop has been much cooler and quieter since the operation, and it's been running smoothly. Which is surprising, seeing as I assumed it would either blow up in my face or start processing everything in Cyrillic after I had my way with it. Score.
