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Gee... I wonder why?

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  • Gee... I wonder why?

    I had someone bring in a laptop for service today. They told me that it was running slow and getting really hot on the bottom. Here's what I found:
    Attached Files

  • #2
    Gah. I've seen desktops that looked like that (enough dust -- and it was almost always in prebuilts like Dells -- to build up to the point that it looked like FUR O_O), but never a laptop quite that bad. How old was that poor thing?!
    "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
    "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
    "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
    "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
    "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
    "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
    Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
    "Our psychic powers only work if the customer has a mind to read." - me

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    • #3
      Maybe 3 years old. The dust was super fine, like talcum powder. I have actually seen worse, but unfortunately don't have pictures.

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      • #4
        Did you tell him the term "laptop" is not to be taken literally?
        I AM the evil bastard!
        A+ Certified IT Technician

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        • #5
          Here's another one for your viewing pleasure:
          Attached Files

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          • #6
            Yes, I too have seen worse and sadly it never gets any easier.

            We used to joke that amount of dust in the laptop was because of the douche to cost ratio, the bigger the douche, the more the laptop costs, the more likely the laptop is dirty as fuck....

            rarely is this wrong....

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            • #7
              There we go. That's the sort of stuff I was talking about You know it's bad when simply opening the case forces you to back off several feet so that you can breathe. Even after grabbing a dust mask and taking the comp outside so that I could safely use the canned air without redecorating the user's house, it was pretty scary.
              "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
              "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
              "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
              "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
              "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
              "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
              Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
              "Our psychic powers only work if the customer has a mind to read." - me

              Comment


              • #8
                I found out what that dust in the laptop was....get ready for it.....it's bird dander. The owner has a boatload of birds apparently. It's not nearly as bad as the one I got in for repair that had rancid yogurt in it. I couldn't smell it thankfully, due to a cold, but it made another one of the techs run to the restroom and barf.
                Last edited by Apallo; 08-01-2013, 07:18 PM.

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                • #9
                  Back when I was at GameStore, someone brought in an XBOX (classic) to trade in, so we, of course hooked it up to test it. The resultant heat woke up the thousands and thousands of tiny roaches living inside the thing...who promptly took up residence all over our formerly bug-free store x.x They KNEW that the bugs were there, they just said that they didn't think it was important to tell us this, or that the unit was non-functional as a result x.x
                  "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
                  "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
                  "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
                  "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
                  "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
                  "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
                  Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
                  "Our psychic powers only work if the customer has a mind to read." - me

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    That's a fuzztop.
                    In my heart, in my soul, I'm a woman for rock & roll.
                    She's as fast as slugs on barbituates.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      I had a desktop brought in once that when we opened it was one solid dust bunny inside. Seems the family had it by the open window on the dining room table. On a farm.

                      The problem turned out to be the hard drive. You know that big black surface mount IC on the bottom?

                      It had a raised "path" (looking like a miniature version of one of Bug Bunny's tunnels from the cartoons) from one of the leads to where the actual chip was in the middle.

                      Best guess is that something died as a dead short and that was the lead that got fried.

                      Wish I had a picture. It's the sort of thing you wouldn't believe if you hadn't seen it.

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                      • #12
                        You know those nice, clean banks you go into that keep everything pristine?

                        Yeah, not so much behind the scenes. One particular branch I was doing an upgrade replacement project with was... amusing shall we say.

                        The swap out was going fairly smoothly and as such we were getting bored waiting for the updates to be transferred. Not the fastest so we had a lot of downtime. Now part of this was the "destruction" (read: three holes drilled) of the hard drive platters. This meant opening up the case of the system, take out the drive (thank god for screwless design) and drill the holes. So we started doing that.

                        Did I mention we were bored out of our MINDS?

                        The one handling the drill saw spun it up for a second and noticed that it exhausts air at a fairly decent speed. So he wondered what would happen if he did it on one of the computer vents. So he tried it.

                        On the one on my lap.

                        That was opened.

                        That I was face in removing the hard drive.

                        That has never been opened since it left the factory.

                        After wiping the dust off my face in the washroom I was laughing too hard to be mad. Ladies and gentlemen, that night we were the bored.
                        I AM the evil bastard!
                        A+ Certified IT Technician

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                        • #13
                          this is why I keep at least one can of compressed air about. Once a year, at a minimum, open the computer case, remove the dust w/ the compressed air. Amazingly, it tends to speed up the computer. That, and I noticed the fans didn't need to work as hard afterwards...

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                          • #14
                            ss: Less dust generally means better air flow. Better air flow means components stay cooler without taxing the fans quite as much ^_^ Viola!

                            This reminds me, I need to get some canned air, myself; I've run out. Fortunately, my case has decent intake filters that catch the worst of the debris ~_~ Literally every "panel" on the front except for the optical drive is a little filter.
                            "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
                            "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
                            "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
                            "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
                            "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
                            "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
                            Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
                            "Our psychic powers only work if the customer has a mind to read." - me

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              I figured it was something like that. I'm still trying to figure out why the computer in question sped up, though.

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