Laptop Stripdown and Service

[simon.snake]

My poor HP laptop was running quite badly.

It was forever running the fan, getting so hot it was causing the glue on the label on the ssd drive I installed in Feb to bubble (don't like to think what other problems it was causing).

Today, after putting it off for so long I decided to strip down the machine and clean it out.

I had about 4 years of dirt and dust in the heat radiator (or whatever it's called) and the fan was quite dusty also.

First problem I had was that last time I tried to open the laptop I removed every screw on the underside of the machine, including the hidden ones under the battery, and still couldn't see how it came apart after that, but after that a friend told me that you have to slide the keyboard and surround towards the back of the machine to free them.

Doing that this time got me further than before and I was able to completely strip down the whole darn thing.

One thing I did notice which I hadn't before is that there's some strange clear square LED on the left of the machine just above the RJ45 network socket  that can't be seen from outside.  Not sure what that is, unless it is some form of Infra Red port or something.

Still, having the machine running for around 4 hours or so since then it has been behaving quite nicely, and I think I'll be able to get on with some fractal exploring without feeling guilty or worried about my precious data.

Anyone else have bizarre dirt and dust related hardware stories?