If you are like me, then you are sitting in front of a laptop that has seen cleaner days. No matter the make or model, it doesn't take long for a laptop to start looking tired, from a smudged screen and a filthy keyboard to dirty, dusty vents and ports.To clean your laptop, you will need:Before you begin, power down your laptop and unplug it from the wall. Remove the battery, if your model allows such a maneuver. First area to hit: the lid and bottom panel. Mix a couple drops of Dawn (or another, inferior dish soap) and a couple cups of warm water together, dip your lint-free cloth in the soapy mixture, wring out, and wipe down the surfaces. Rinse out the cloth with clean water and wipe down again. Lastly, to avoid water streaks, wipe down a third time with a dry cloth.I have found that using this mixture of Dawn and water is also effective in cleaning the display. Read my post on how to clean your monitor or TV screen for more on that.Next up: the keyboard. The key here is not to let any liquid drip down underneath your keyboard.

Use your can of compressed air to remove any crumbs that are lying in the crevices in between the keys. After that, dab a lint-free cloth in isopropyl rubbing alcohol and gently rub your keys. You might be able to remove some stains with soap and water, but isopropyl rubbing alcohol is better for two reasons. For one, it evaporates almost immediately, which greatly reduces the risk of liquid getting inside your laptop. air duct cleaning do it yourselfSecondly, it's effective in removing the oily residue left behind by your fingertips.easy way to clean roman blindsIf you lent your laptop to a friend who returned it while sneezing and coughing, you can disinfect your keyboard by using a disinfecting wipe containing up to 0.5 percent hydrogen peroxide.best way to clean metal awnings

Lastly, if your laptop has large side vents, you'll likely find that they are a magnet for dust bunnies. (Same goes for expansion ports.) Use a can of compressed air to blow the dust bunnies out; this will not only make your laptop look better, but it can also improve performance by letting your laptop better control its temperature with a clean vent. top 10 vacuum cleaners canisterIf there is a dust bunny that you see is stuck behind the vent that you can't dislodge by blasting it with compressed air, then consult your user manual on how to open the case. best leather cleaner for coach bagsBe sure you remember which screws went where for the reassembly; top 10 vacuum cleaners canistersnap a picture or two of your laptop before opening the case for a handy reference.

If you used this guide to clean your MacBook, don't stop at the exterior. Learn how to clean and speed up Mac OS X Mavericks. If it's finally time to say good-bye to your beat-up old laptop, take a look through our list of the best laptops you can buy right now.Editors' note: It's spring cleaning time! Week's two's theme: physical cleaning. Check back every day this week to see how best to keep dirt, grime, crumbs, and other annoying bits off your devices. And be sure to return next week for more spring cleaning tips and tricks. Sign up or log in to customize your list. Here's how it works: Anybody can ask a question The best answers are voted up and rise to the top To get rid of dust that had gathered near the fan, I put a vacuum cleaner to the air intake (with the computer turned off). This removed the dust. It also caused the fan to rotate at a fairly high speed. Quite faster than normal speed, judging from the sound. Do I risk destroying stuff by doing this?

You could damage the fan from spinning it that way. You could also damage many components in the PC using a vacuum cleaner - it generates a large amount of static electricity! You should NEVER use a vacuum on electronic equipment! The proper thing to do would be to open the machine out and blow the dust free with non-static compressed air. (It's best to hold fans still rather than letting them spin freely for the same reason having the vacuum spin them up is bad, but very few people bother to do this because with quick bursts of air the odds are very slight.) I have been told that each motor of the PC's fans relies on bushings, that are built to tolerate a certain RPM. Exceeding that RPM, such as when large volumes flow, can reduce the life of the fans. In addition, off-center suction can place a tangential torque on the axle of the fan. So you do risk this kind of damage as well. I have done it to many many machines and have not reduced the useful life of expensive fans.

You can definitely destroy a cheap fan very easily. For desktops, fans are easily replaced. For laptops...not so much. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google Sign up using Email and Password Post as a guest By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service. Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged laptop fan cleaning or ask your own question.Many of us own laptops where the fan seems to run an annoying amount of the time, but it's better than a laptop fan that doesn 't run at all. fan in your notebook fails, the usual symptom is an overheating CPU and automaticSometimes the laptop runs for 10 minutes, sometimes for a half hour, it depends on the task and the power. Troubleshooting a hot CPU can be as simple as making sure you aren't blocking the airflow outside the laptop. Often times, you can access the fans and heatsink without a huge job, on this Toshiba A65, all it takes is some careful prying and two screws.

always, remove the battery before working on any laptop. The first step is removing the combination blank and hinge cover that allows access to the two screws securing the keyboard. It is snapped into place with little tabs on the long edge and a big tab on each end. The picture to the right shows how the blank and the hinge cover are all one piece of plastic, so you have to open the screen to fully remove theI should mention for desperate people with no mechanical skills, one non-invasive way to extend the length of time a notebook with poor cooling will run between shutdowns is to run it on battery and choose the most aggressive (ie, longest life) power saving mode. BTW, I'm working on this notebook because I was asked to bypass the power connector as a favor. got five kids in the house and I burned my finger on the metal part of the 100BaseT port after I got it charging again, so I'm afraid to return it for The problem I was originally asked to fix should have tipped me off to the

overheating issues this notebook would suffer. The pin had broken out of the center of the power connector on the motherboard, which meant the batteryMy fix (really a kludge) was to solder a new wire directly to the connector and bring it out the I/O port blank on the back of the notebook. The coax power cable was HUGE. Turned out to be rated for 2.0 amps. secure the keyboard in the laptop, and it's not even necessary to disconnect the ribbon connector from the motherboard to access the fans. laptop uses two fans, a large exhaust fan that pulls cooling air through the body of the notebook, and a smaller CPU fan on top of the large heatsink. The large fan to the right draws cooling air in the bottom of the laptop, the smaller fan in the center is directly cooling the CPU. overheating is pretty much limited to making sure the laptop fans operate and aren't completely burried in lint. This is a pretty robust cooling system and likely to keep most laptops from shutting down from thermal overload

protection, but they stuck a P4 2.8 Ghz CPU in this puppy! When I went out on the web and read some reviews of how this laptop performed when new, I saw comments like "Keyboard gets too hot to type" and "Frequent shutdownsSony made a Vaio with the same CPU, HP made an Pavilion and Dell an Inspiron. I've seen similar overheating and battery life complaints for them as well. As you can see to the left, there was a build-up of dust on the CPU fan which I blew out with compressed air, but not enough to cause any thermal shutdownThe reason I burned my finger on this boat anchor is it just runs too hot as a design flaw. OK, I didn't get a blister, but I'm afraid to put this laptop with a kludged power connector in a family home. know how they could have forced more air through this thing than with the big intake fan they are already using, so troubleshooting includes making sure you have unobstructed airflow to the BOTTOM of the laptop for the fan