Anatomy of laptop

The cleaning work was once interrupted by the battery issue (I hadn't even started yet though :P) Yesterday I bought another set of batteries,and this time the batteries can be packed into the cleaner.

This time they can be packed into it.

Pray to Jusus and Budha make myself calm down, a big work is going to start~~~!! 1.Battery, HD and cables Before every thing goes start, check the laptop's battery, HD and cables (power cable, head phone, mouse, etc) has been removed. Also make sure to touch some metal things (such as door knob) frequently during the whole process lest static charge should ruin the laptop.

	Seagate 30G harddisk...
	...and its other side.

2. Top cover First of all, I have to remove 2 screws on the rear side of the top cover (otherwise I can't remove the cover). Then start to pry the top cover from right, middle, to left with flat-blade driver carefully.

	Pry from the right...
	...to the middle...
	...then to the left.
	Pry up!
	This side as well.
	Top cover front side.
	Top cover back side.

3. Speakers

Under the top cover

There are two small black speakers on both side. Here we can see the speakers are covered with dust.

Dirty speaker...

It looks much different after cleaning with vacuum cleaner.

Much better after cleaning. :)

4. Keyboard Removing the 4 screws beyond keyboard, I can flip the keyboard toward me and then find its cable. Unlike normal keyboard and cable, this one is so thin that any strain would damage it. (I personally would call it plastic sheet rather than cable). The cable is fixtated with a knotch underneath the main cover. Carefully lift up the knotch, the cable will (literally) “pop out”.

	Flip the keyboard.
	What a thin cable...
	Keyboard removed.

5.Speakers and Switch board Unfortunately the speakers on my laptop can't be removed as their cables seems to have been stuck onto the hooks by glue (or that sort of things). Deliberately pull them out will split them into segments and the speakers will never work again. Although leaving them will make my work a bit harder, here I just keep them intact.

These cables (and thus speakers) can't be removed.

Unplug 2 cables on switch board carefully (again, they're really thin and delicate), the switch board can be lifted and its cable can be found underneath. Unplug it and the switch board can be removed.

	Switch board front side.
	Switch board back side.

6.Monitor The monitor is fixed on right and left stand, each of which have 3 screws. Note that there is a land wire on one of the left screws.

	LCD screws (left).
	LCD screw (right).

Here the monitor cable is a big problem as the cable is thicker than the ditch which the cable is in, and also the cable slot is too close to remove the cable from it. Of course it can't be pulled out forcefully, hence this is a bit tricky and need some technique to make it “slide” out of there.

	Taking out this wire can be a bit tricky.
	LCD cable.
	LCD cable.

7.DVD-ROM drive Actually at the point I remove the keyboard, I'd been able to take DVD drive out. There are 2 screws in the hole denoted with the red circle. Unscrew them, stretch finger into the hole and push toward the right, the DVD drive will pop out from the bay. Watch out that the edge of the hole is somewhat sharp and don't get injured.

	Can you see where the DVD is?
	Put finger into the hole and push DVD drive out.
	DVD drive for laptop. Much different from those for desktops.

8. Main cover By main cover I mean the part on which I put my hand and arm. Touch pad is also on it. Here I have to remove nearly 20 screws from the main cover and also the bottom of the laptop.

So many screws...

Since I've removed those screws, I can now remove the main cover, right? But wait then. Lift the cover slowly, we can notice that there's a cable connecting to underneath.

	The white cable is connected to the touchpad and the power signal lights.
	Touchpad cable.
	Another viewpoint.

This is similar with keyboard's cable, except that this one is much narrower than the previous one. Again, lift the knotch, release the cable and finally the main cover is removed and we can see the mainboard, heatsink module, heaps of chips and others.

	Another thin plastic layer.
	Finally reach the motherboard.
	The other side of the main cover.
	VGA chip "ATi IGP320M"

Now we can see how dirty in this laptop is. (compare with cpu fan, these can still be called “clean” though...)

	The bottom of the speaker.
	Floppy drive bay (there's no floppy drive on this laptop, by the way).
	HD drive bay.
	Battery bay. It's amazing that never short even like this...
	Thermal pad.

9.Heatsink module The heatsink module (including cpu fan) is fixated with 3 tiny screws. Unplug the fan cable before removing the module.

	CPU fan. Made in Taiwan.
	Fan module (front).
	Fan module (rear).

Also the cpu fan is fixated with another 4 tiny screws. Unscrew them and see how it is inside...

	Erh! What a filthy...!
	Oh! Yuck!!
	...No wonder there's no airflow.

Errr~~~ it's yuck isn't it! What I can say other than dirty is still dirty. And this is where those cleaning kit is really needed.

	Dirt on the qtip...
	...and dirt in the dust bag of vacuum cleaner.
	After cleaning.
	After cleaning.

The cpu is AMD Atholon XP-M, and like other Thoroughbred-B core, there's no heat-spreader on it. Clean the surface of the cpu and heatsink carefully with lint-free paper (with isopropanol on it) and spread a thin layer of thermal compound on it with a plastic card.

Athlon XP-M with thin and smooth layer thermal compound.

10. Reassemble Lastly, reassemble all parts and reboot it to check if anything goes wrong. Fortunately nothing wrong and the temperature also decreases significantly even if cpu is full loaded. The airflow is also much stronger than before. That's all of it (well, not exactly). It's somewhat a big work, but I suppose it worths the effort. “Sam~~~! Dinner.” Marivic is calling me. Meal after an exhausting big work ...it must be particularly yummy~~~

Let's start working !! ...or can we?

After dinner and shower, I prepared all gadgets I need and was going to take my laptop apart. These are what I need. Basicly they are Phillips drivers (magnetified head prefered) No. 0 and No. 1, flat-blade driver, cotton tips (aka Q-tips), thermal compound (silver contained), mini-vacuum cleaner, some light-coloured towels (in my case, white), toilet paper (or any other lint-free paper would work. Not shown in this picture), clean phone card (or other plastic card. Not shown in the picture) and 99% isopropanol (also not shown). The mini-vacuum cleaner is driven by 4 batteries. Put batteries into it and found ...Eh?? The batteries don't fit into the space!? I never realise before that these rechargeable batteries were bigger than the normal ones...-.-;; As I really need this vacuum cleaner in this work, I have to get extra “normal size” batteries before I carry on... The big work is literally “going to start” ...in the near future. :P

Computer maintainance

It's been more than 1 year since I came to NZ. During this time (especially in summer) my laptop had rebooted (automatically) or even crashed (BSOD) several times. I reckon it's due to overheat. As I'm also running grid (UD and Folding@Home), the temperature of the CPU usually goes up to 76 degree or more! (good in winter though). I usually could hear the fan's violent noise yet couldn't feel the airflow. Apparantly dust must had stuck in the laptop and I'd been considering to clean the heatsink and cpu fan when I was free. But as all of us know – warranty avoided if any of electrical facility taken apart, I could do nothing but just clean the keyboard, monitor and airduct – of course these didn't work too much. Normally I'd take desktop computer apart and clean it annually; however laptop can't do that regularlly and easily. It's time consuming – laptop is so well-packed that taking apart it is not as easy as desktop. Take heatsink and cpu for example. On desktop computer, I just have to open the case, unplug any cable I can see, take motherboard out from the case and then clean the heatsink and cpu. After that, just put it back and connect all cables. That's it! Easy. In some case I even can remove heatsink right after open the case. On my laptop, however, I'd have to pry the top cover then remove speaker, keyboard (and of course also their extremely thin and delicate cables) carefully, followed by separating its monitor (I'm not joking), DVD, HD, main cover and heaps of screws, then finally heatsink module (how many steps it's been?) I wouldn't have any replacement if anything went wrong as all part in laptop are different from those in desktop ones. And also I can't get any warranty from factory (you know why don't you). That is, I'd have to buy another new laptop! And... it also seens that no company or factory provide the service of cleaning for customers' computer. Or, they'd ask for extra-pay as it's not included in their warranty. Normally it's a big money if the service is not incluced in the warranty. Besides, even if they'd fix for me, I wouldn't have computer to use in the meantime. So, again, it's better to get another new one. Fortunately (or should I say unfortunately?), my laptop's warranty has finished months ago, so I wouldn't have to care about those “paper-words”. Now I can do what I want to :P . You might say it'd be broken if I make any mistake, but actually the chance would be higher if I leave it and keep overheating. I hate it happens in the following 3-4 years so I have to do it now! So! I'm going to have a big work on it recently.