Slack, as usual May 7, 2009
Posted by aikenthum in Stuff I wrote.trackback
Wow, it’s totally been 2 years since I posted anything to this blog! I’m amazed WordPress didn’t delete it…
A friend reminded me I actually have a blog today, so I thought I’d log in and write something. Well, today I decided to tear down my Dell D600 laptop and see why the damn thing was heating up so much. I’ve had it for 5 years now, so my chief suspect was dust.
After finding a handy disassembly guide at http://2xod.com/articles/Dell Latitude D600 Disassembly I gave up on trying to remove the bottom half of the case and tackled it from the top. Sure enough, there was a tell-tale trail of dust clogging up the gap between the heatsink / exhaust fan duct and the edge of the WLAN card housing. I gave it a bit of a tug, and a little dust came out. I hooked in there with a screwdriver, and a bit more dust came out. I then pulled on a tendril of thick looking dust, and this came out:
Dust gremlin!
That might not look like much, but it’s about the same size as the exhaust fan duct when mashed together. Nice!
So, I’m typing this post on the newly de-dusted lappie, and hey presto, it’s running alot cooler, faster, etc etc. Maybe I’ll keep it for a bit longer yet 
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