So yesterday, my friend gave me her laptop for free as she'd bought a new one and didn't use this one any more. I was a little confused at first but snatched up the offer after she complained that it was slow and that the Wireless "didn't work anymore". Yeah right!
I took it home and I've been messing around with it for a little while. I installed the driver for the Wireless card (durr :facepalm:) and cleaned it up a little, removing shitty programs, malware and other stuff which isn't needed.
Earlier today, I noticed that it was starting to become a little warm, so I fired up Speccy to check my temperatures...

Holy shit!
I turned it off immediately, flipped it upside down and removed the battery. After grabbing a screwndriver, I removed the bottom of the case... DUST CITY. Never before have I seen so much dust, hair and plain SHIT inside a laptop! I had to get the vacuum cleaner to it because it was so thick. I also found that a massive clump of dust had gotten so big and thick (it was a ball of dust, literally) that it had stopped the fan from spinning around. WTF?!
After removing all the dust and putting some new thermal paste on the CPU, the temperatures are looking like this...

Which, while not being the best temperatures in the world, is pretty good for a shitty old laptop. It's also constant, which is a relief.
Good times!
Comments
Stupid people throwing away "broken" computers is every computer enthusiasts best friend.
I had soo much computer parts that i found in dumpsters and got from friends and family that thought it was broken that i had to start throwing it away.
No such luck with laptops tho, fastest one i got is a Pentium 3... :facepalm:
I recently got a PC full of dust from an uncle of mine. I opened the case and said "Oh gee" and got the vacum cleaner out. Dust was packed in there like someone had emptied a pillow in the case. The former owner was looking pretty shocked to see all that dust in there.
I threw the keyboard and mouse away because they were so fucking filthy. Food scraps and what seemed to be dried bodily fluids. Nasty, nasty, nasty. I never looked at that family the same way again. They are a bunch of uptight queers always trying to uphold an image of "higher class" but they computer was just filthy.
Dude, UNPLUG AND CLEAN IT! You're killing it.
Maybe I'll clean it out over the weekend. Another day won't hurt.
Wait....no the roaches still alive hiding in the heat sink have to be the worst. I can now tell if a computer is dead via insect infestation with my olfactory senses alone.