electro cleanup

last night, i decided to do a full physical cleanup of my laptop. i got the idea to do that because my laptop fan was so loud that i actually had to double the volume of my music in order to hear it and you could hear my fan everywhere on the second floor of my house.

i had my computer cleaned once before but i had forgotten which screws to take out so i had to check online. i am so thankful that the internet exists because there was a website for my exact computer model.

that's what the part of my laptop under the mouse/touchpad looks like! i thought the microchip looked cool; it was directly under the touchpad. the other microchip on the right is for my finger scanner. i needed to remove this section of my computer first before i could remove the keyboard itself but i didn't need to clean this section.



This is what it looks like underneath the keyboard! i edited out the pin# because i don't want people stalking my laptop or something. i think it looks kind of low-tech for some reason. i needed to remove the keyboard to get rid of dust in and around the fan, which is in the top left corner.


This is a close-up of my computer fan. as you can see, i wasn't done cleaning it because there is still dust everywhere. the copper covering was annoying because i can't remove it so it covers half the fan's blades and the edges are sharp. when i had my laptop cleaned by a professional, he had a special laptop vacuum that pulled out the dust so it was cleaned in a couple of seconds. unfortunately, i don't have one of those so i had to use tweezers, my fingers, and a washcloth. it took a long time to clean...


this is my ghetto-fied laptop, before i put it back together. you can see my fan again. that blasted thing! you can see my finger-scanner on the bottom right, above the IBM logo


next, i removed all the keys on my keyboard + the trackpoint (the red thing that can be used as a mouse instead of the touchpad). i put all of the keys in order on my bed so that i wouldn't screw up when i put them back. i've had this particular laptop for 3 years but there's a few keys that i've never used so i'm pretty sure i wou't have known where they went. plus, it makes a cool photo anyways.


this is what my laptop looks like without the keys. if you click the picture, you'll see a larger version of it. you can see all the crumbs and dust and shit which looks pretty gross. imo, those white things looks like nipples, especially if you were to see it in person. the transparent stuff in the middle of the white is squishy and fun to play with. i had to use my fingers and tweezers to clean this.


hey look i made a smiley face~. i took this pic before i washed the exterior of my laptop so it still looks grimy haha


in conclusion: my fan is still noisy so i think it might be broken because there's nothing caught in there but it's kind of more quiet now