It’s like a have a new laptop again. The Toshiba has always had problems staying cool – Toshiba even had a class action lawsuit because of faulty cooling units. I should know, I’ve had the things replaced twice. So when the spontaneous crashing started again I assumed that the cooling unit was shot. But then I thought, this was fixed by pros the last time – what if this isn’t the problem? So I started a little net research. As I expected, I’m not the only one whose Toshiba has crashed without warning due to over-heating. But a couple sites offered a simple solution that I should have thought of on my own after dealing with the PC. Dust!
I took off one of the back panels of the laptop and using my can of compressed air I blew a ton of dust out of the laptop’s innards. Then I took the vacuum cleaner, attached the hose, and let the suction go to work on the grids over the fans. Two sizable wads of dust and grime surfaced and I fished them out. I put the panel back on and hooked up the power again. And for the first time in months the fans did not launch into overdrive in a matter of minutes. In fact they barely ran in the two hours I had the thing running.
So now I feel like an idiot because really, I should have thought of this. I know electric motors attract dust and it would only make sense that the laptop would draw a heroic amount of the stuff. But I let the history of the cooling unit distract me. This shall not happen again.
jeroljohnson 