If you’ve had your laptop for a year or two, it may be full of dust. Dust clogs fans, vents, and heat sinks, preventing your PC from cooling down properly. You can remove a good amount of this dust, even if you can’t open your laptop. Dust build-up can prevent a PC from cooling down properly, and that heat can even cause hardware damage. Your laptop’s fans may also run at full blast, draining your battery. Your laptop may even reduce its performance to stay cool. Most laptops, especially newer ones, aren’t designed to be opened by their users. This presents a serious problem. On a desktop PC, you’d power down your PC, open the case, blow it out with a can of compressed air, and close the case. You could dust out a laptop in a similar way– if only there was a way to open it up and get inside. Your laptop may have a bottom panel (or several bottom panels) you can unscrew to access the internals. Check your laptop’s manual, or look up a special “service manual” for your specific model of laptop online.

Power down the laptop, remove the battery, and unscrew the panel to get at the laptop’s insides. If a service manual is available for your laptop, it will walk you through the process. Depending on your laptop, opening the panel may or may not void your warranty. After it’s open, take the laptop somewhere you don’t mind getting dusty — like your garage, or even outside. removing dust from laptop fanUse a can of compressed air to blow out the internals of your laptop. vacuum cleaner deals black friday 2013Ensure you’re blowing the dust out of the laptop’s case, not just moving it around inside. best vacuum cleaner for marble floors

For example, you could blow more toward your laptop’s vents so the dust would be blasted through the vents and out of the laptop. Be careful when blowing air at the fans in the laptop — if you make the fans spin too quickly, they could be damaged. Blow at the fans from many different angles, using short blasts of air. We recommend compressed air — also known as canned air — for a reason. cost to clean a c ductsDon’t use a vacuum, and be extra careful if you opt to use an air compressor instead of a can of compressed air.best way to clean sticky wood floors When you’re done, you can screw the panel back on, plug in the battery, and power the laptop back on. best steam vacuum cleaner consumer reports

It’ll run cooler, and its fans should spin up less often. Whether you want to upgrade your laptop’s hardware or just dust it out, manufacturers don’t want you to open most laptops. But dust does build up inside a laptop, whether you can open it yourself or not. Even if you can’t open your laptop, you can still attempt to dislodge some of that dust. First, take the laptop somewhere you don’t mind getting dusty. You probably don’t want to blow dust all over your desk or bed. Get a can of compressed air, point it at the laptop’s cooling vents, and give them a few short bursts of air. With any luck, the jets of air will knock some of the dust loose and it will escape the laptop’s vents. You won’t get all the dust out of the laptop, but at least it will stop plugging up the vents, fans, and whatever else it’s stuck to. This isn’t the ideal way to dust out a laptop, but it may be all you can do. Exercise caution when doing this. If you aim a blast of compressed air directly at a cooling fan inside a vent, you could cause the cooling fan to spin too quickly.

Don’t aim the air directly at the fan and give it a long blast. Instead, blow air in short bursts, waiting in between to ensure you’re not spinning the fan too quickly. If your laptop has serious problems with overheating and you can’t clean it yourself, you may have to contact the manufacturer for service. If it’s still under warranty, they should hopefully help you. If you’ve had your laptop for a year or two, there’s probably some significant dust build-up inside its case. Cleaning your laptop on a regular basis is a good idea, but you don’t need to go overboard and do this all the time. How often you need to clean your laptop depends on the laptop itself and how dusty your environment is. Image Credit: nick@ on Flickr, Rick Kempel on Flickr, Although on Wikimedia Commons, Cheon Fong Liew on FlickrI've written about this subject in years past, but it's so important I feel obligated to repeat myself for those who might have missed it. Your laptop may be choking to death.

You see, like desktops, laptops can suck up lots of dust. And because everything in a laptop is packed together so tightly, dust is even more dangerous. When the cooling fans have to run constantly, it's just a matter of time before the machine start to overheat. When that happens, it may lock up. It may damage system components. And it might even kick the bucket. Fortunately, as I've mentioned before, this is easy to fix. All you need is a small screwdriver and a can of compressed air (or an air compressor—though tread lightly with that, as noted below). Turn off the laptop, flip it over, and remove the battery. I recommend unplugging the AC adapter, too. Look for an air vent on an outer edge of the laptop; there should be a nearby access panel on the bottom. Unscrew that panel and remove it. You should see the fan right underneath. Your mileage may vary, but the three laptops I have here all have panel-accessible fans. Now it's time to blow out the dust, something you might want to do outside.

Hit the fan in short bursts from lots of different angles, making sure to blow most frequently in the direction of the air vent. If you're using an air compressor, as I did, keep the pressure relatively low, and don't get too close with the nozzle. Too strong a burst and you could damage the fan or something else. After you've blown out all the dust, replace the access panel and battery, then power up the system. I'll wager that it runs much quieter (and cooler) than it did before. If your laptop is more than a year or two old, it's long overdue for such a cleaning. (Same goes for your desktop.) Don't wait until it's too late. And add a reminder to your calendar so you remember to do this again every couple months. Contributing Editor Rick Broida writes about business and consumer technology. , or try the treasure trove of helpful folks in the PC World Community Forums. Sign up to have the Hassle-Free PC newsletter e-mailed to you each week. To comment on this article and other PCWorld content, visit our Facebook page or our Twitter feed.