[jr2]

So, last night, my HP Pavilion dv4-1275mx overheated and shut down.  The fan had been running more and more and at increasingly high speeds as the performance and battery life over the last few months had been dropping; so I knew it was probably a clogged heating vent.

I disassembled my laptop and cleaned the fins out and voila!!  Laptop works great again, fan turns on, system cools down in a minute, fan turns off.  Battery is lasting longer and I can rest my palms comfortably on my machine again.  Should have done this a long time ago.

Anyways, I thought I'd mention it in case anyone has a similar problem with their laptop; it may be the cooling fins!

PS And I only had 3 extra screws when I was done! 

[Mongoose]

I should try cracking open our old PlayStation 2 and doing the same thing.  I shudder to think about how much dust that's accumulated over the years.

[Al-Rik]

Clean the heatsinks at least once a year, or twice if you are a smoker or have cats or dogs.

Spending some extra bucks for a desktop or tower with dustfilters is also a good idea, when building or buying a new PC.

[jr2]

I spent a long time on it... I don't relish disassembling laptops.  Very few are made with ease of assembly / disassembly in mind.  For example, to clean out a heat exchanger, it would be helpful if there was a panel on the bottom that you could unscrew to access it.  To date, I've only seen one laptop employ that method, and it was an old Compaq Presario (1200 series IIRC).

To get to the heat exchanger, I had to literally remove every component in my laptop.

That and I dislike very much how brittle the trim is, and how delicate some of the cable connectors can be (my laptop is actually very good for the cable connectors; I've seen some where they would just as soon snap off rather than unclip the cable they are retaining).

That is why I don't clean my laptop more often.  That and I don't like having extra screws every time.  Seriously, what's with: a) 7 different screw types in on laptop and b) 35 screws to hold it together?!?  (exaggerating a bit there, but still!)

[MP-Ryan]

Laptops simply aren't built to be disassembled and cleaned easily.  I suspect this is to keep electronics novices out of them, but it seems to have the same effect on people who do have some idea what they're doing too.

Also, whomever decided to start including oddball Torx sizes on screwheads for electronics needs to be burned at the stake, shot, fed to a hungry shark, and dropped off a cliff, not necessarily in that order.  Torx are difficult enough to get in any ordinary screwbit set, and now you make me go hunt for some weird size you picked?  The same can be said for certain manufacturers of screws with Allen key heads on them.

[jr2]

Agreed.  And, keeping novices out of laptops is one thing, but how in the world is even a skilled computer tech supposed to remember where all the different sizes of screws go when more than half of them aren't labelled and you have to disassemble the entire laptop virtually every time you go into the case for anything except memory, wireless, and hard disk??  Although, I do know that Toshiba laptops are really good at this; they seem to only have about 3-4 sizes of screws, not too insane a number of them, and all of the screw holes are properly marked for size.

That, and there's no excuse for ****ty snap-on trim panels and retaining clips for the ribbon cables.  (To clarify, I'm not against snap-on trim panels, just ****ty ones as they break and have to be glued and make it look like you don't know what you are doing to the customer. 

"OK, sir, I finished with your laptop and it now works fine, no more BSODs, it stays cool, there's just one thing I want to point out, as you can see if you look here, the tri--"

"What's this?"

"Oh, as I was saying, the trim panel broke so I had to glue it back together."

"What?  I'm not paying you full price for this repair! You broke my computer!"

"Umm, it's a trim panel.  It doesn't affect the operation of your computer, and it's glued, so you really can't see it cosmetically speaking unless you are looking for it.  I just re-applied the thermal paste on your CPU / GPU, for which I had to disassemble your entire laptop.  The trim doesn't come off any way except by snapping apart, and apparently your manufacturer didn't ever think that their cheap laptop would need to be disassembled or they were hoping you would just go and buy a new one, so they took the cheap way out when it came to selecting the plastic for their snap-on trim panels."

"I want half price!  You suck!  You obviously don't know what you are doing!"

EDIT: It's even worse when it comes to retainer clips, as, unless you know how to replace them (requires soldering tiny micro-retainers; I don't have that skill ATM), you end up either replacing the motherboard / or if you're lucky, the part that has the clip, or else sending the unit out to someone who can replace the clip.

[Mongoose]

I think it's part of the more modern trend of disposability...whether it's laptops or smart phones, the manufacturers want you to buy the New Shiny Version the moment your old one has an issue.  There's a reason why you can't make much of a living as a television repairman anymore.

[KyadCK]

I spent a long time on it... I don't relish disassembling laptops.  Very few are made with ease of assembly / disassembly in mind.  For example, to clean out a heat exchanger, it would be helpful if there was a panel on the bottom that you could unscrew to access it.  To date, I've only seen one laptop employ that method, and it was an old Compaq Presario (1200 series IIRC).

To get to the heat exchanger, I had to literally remove every component in my laptop.

That and I dislike very much how brittle the trim is, and how delicate some of the cable connectors can be (my laptop is actually very good for the cable connectors; I've seen some where they would just as soon snap off rather than unclip the cable they are retaining).

That is why I don't clean my laptop more often.  That and I don't like having extra screws every time.  Seriously, what's with: a) 7 different screw types in on laptop and b) 35 screws to hold it together?!?  (exaggerating a bit there, but still!)

You would love the Precision. Total to remove entire bottom panel? 2 screws, and it slides off (revealing both fans). The keyboard trim scares the hell out of me though, and ofcource ram slots 3 and 4 are under the keyboard. Sadly, the primary HDD bay is also under the bottom plate, and secured with a total of 5 screws. In general, all laptops are a pain to maintain and upgrade.

I think it's part of the more modern trend of disposability...whether it's laptops or smart phones, the manufacturers want you to buy the New Shiny Version the moment your old one has an issue.  There's a reason why you can't make much of a living as a television repairman anymore.

Inverter board fried on my Insperon E1505, it now hosts my private minecraft server. A 1.67 Core Duo and 4gb of ram is a lot to just toss away.