Post date: 09-Oct-2009 10:36:04
Naturally I also have problems with my development laptop which is now getting on a bit. One of the "old" pentium computers doubling up as a house heater. Our cat just LOVES this computer; his own personal hot air blower. Hence it filled up with cat fur. I put down the overheating to that problem. About 18 months ago I stripped down the underside of the computer removing the cpu heatsink and removing the cat fur pad blocking the entrance to the heat sink. Unfortunately that made not a lot of difference, well, it would run for about half an hour befor the caps lock and num lock leds started to flash. This always preceded an abrupt power off so I took it to mean "it's getting too durned hot in here" though no mention is made in any manual that I can find.
I bought an external fan from Maplin - didn't do any good whatsoever. The problem got worse and worse, to the extent that if I could get 5 mins out of the machine I was lucky. Looking at the fan, it was apparent that it was simply not starting up. It would jig a little. With a strong puff it was possible to start it up but once stopped after the temperature dropped, back to puffing. Picking up a D480W and blowing into its bottom every few minutes is not an attractive proposition.