75ZT Community

A couple of years ago I put Ubuntu on to my wifes old laptop and highly delighted with its performance.

Just recently it had started to freeze or just display a black screen after being used of a while. I could hear the fan running but it seemed to get very hot. So I dismantled it and inspected the fan. The air outlets the fan through a sort of mesh that is about 10mm in depth. On this mesh I found about 5mm of dust blocking it. Cleaned it off, reassembled the laptop and hey presto a new lease of life.

Wonder how many laptops get binned because the fan needs cleaning?

Very many. Its a VERY common problem. I had a laptop that was around 12 months old when I managed to upgrade for a bargain price. So I sold it to a friend of my SiL. A couple of years later, they said the hard disc was corrupt and although they could get the new disc, they asked if I'd install it. I assumed they'd diagnosed it correctly (allegedly their son knew IT but didn't have time to install) so went ahead. Now when it started up it seemed really slow and was much nosier (fan noise) than I remembered, plus it was getting red hot.

I sent the bag of dust back with it......