Iceland volcanic ash and my PC

[Xander Pirdy]

On 4/19/2010 4:09 PM, axel wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-04-19 at 19:23 +0000, Frans Ketelaars wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 19 Apr 2010 10:09:31 +0100, axel wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Greetings!
>>>
>>> I run a Dell Inspiron 1501 with Ubuntu 8.04. and I live in London where
>>> the air pollution is so bad you dont need to smoke to be a candidate for
>>> all kind of breathing problems.
>>>
>>> About a year ago I had a Dell Service Tech replace the Dell PC fans ,
>>> filters and a few other bits and pieces : due to the fact that the PC
>>> was crashing due to high Temperature. His recommendation was to blow
>>> high pressure purified air into fan intakes.
>>>
>>> Further reading on the subject , I found the opposite opinion :that was
>>> the last thing you should do, as it blows all the dust inwards...past
>>> the filters and into the system.
>>> i.e. in other words the remedy lies in using a vacuum cleaner and point
>>> it at the fan intakes.
>>>
>>> Now with all this ash coming my way...
>>>
>>> I would appreciate your thoughts on the subject, Cheers,
>>> Axel.
>>>
>> I would check Dell's user manual ( online or offline ) for your laptop
>> model or contact their helpdesk or service department regarding cleaning
>> dust from your laptop's cooling system.
>>
>> I wouldn't mention 'volcanic ash' :)
>>
>>      -Frans
>>
> Thanks Frans !
> Regards
> Axel.
>
>>
>>


Axel,
I am fairly sure that I have taken apart and cleaned the dell inspiron
1501, and it was one of the easiest air filter cleanings I had ever
done. You pop off (from memory, you should probably google this first)
the piece of plastic in between the keyboard and the screen (the one
with the power buttons, and are presented with two small screws that
allow the keyboard to be flipped back. When I got this far there was an
immense amount of dust all over the inside of the thing: the similarity
between most laptop cooling systems and a vacuum cleaner never fails to
amaze me. From there I think there was a metal plate on the right side I
think that came off with maybe three screws revealing the fan. Taking
this cover exposed the inside of the copper heat sink I think and from
there I just peeled off about a 1/4" of something fairly identical to
dryer lint. I then carefully vacuumed (try not to touch ANYTHING with
the plastic vacuum as that is a really good environment for creating
static, so don't even get too close to the motherboard without that
metal thing on, though you can clean that off on its own)  the rest of
the inside up put it all back together and wham! no more overheating,
about 2 times as long of battery life and the whole system ran smoothly
from there on out.

So my suggestion is NOT to call dell, as they gave you horrible advice
already, and look up a comprehensive guide for getting to the heat sink
making sure that you understand it and being careful to store and
correctly lable the screws from each step so that you can put it back
together. Good advice that I heard once (though have never taken as I
tend to jump into things, is to print out every step of the directions,
and then tape the screws to the step that they came off in as you go
along. This way when you work backwards you know where everything came
from, and will hopefully accomplish that oft missed goal of ending up
with no "extra" parts when "everything" is back together.

-Xander

p.s. I wouldn't be surprised if the hard shut downs from overheating are
causing the problems that you mentioned before (OS not found.)? But one
more thing on that that I may have failed to mention is that you really
should back every thing up if you haven't already because the comment
about the hard-drive going bad, and corrupting your data is absolutely
valid.