wow, I'm tired

My laptop has been shutting down from overheating, occasionally, for a few months. At first it was only when I had it outdoors on a hot day. Of late, it has been happening more often. In fact, it started happening daily in the past week. Yesterday it happened several times, and by the evening it would shut down after only about five minutes.

So, this morning I googled "overheating shutdown dell" or something like that. The answer and solution appeared immediately. I had to clean the cooling fan and its output port, which holds copper cooling fins attached to heat pipes running from the CPU.

The forum where I found the answer also described how to get to the fan. I pulled out my tools and set up shop on the back porch, where the light is better and there is a table suitable for the job. As I expected, the cooling fins were covered with a mat of lint and dust; most of it came off easily and in one piece. The rest took more work but I got it all out and then cleaned the fan blades.

When I finished, I booted up the machine and downloaded a temperature monitoring program. It showed that the laptop was running at a normal temperature. The fan, when it ran, was very quiet and was running for shorter periods than it recently had. It was obvious that the cleaning had been successful.

Then I went to the kitchen, taking the (running) computer with me so I could have music while I cleaned. (Yesterday I noticed that the sink needed a good cleaning.)

Lisa pointed out that the PC cleaning job wouldn't be complete until the fan it normally sits on - a small, 10" by 10" plastic fan Lisa used to use for cooling when she felt hot. I have been using it for raising the computer to a level where typing is easier and to provide more room for the cooling fan to suck air.

After cleaning the sink and the surrounding area, I disassembled the fan and began cleaning it. The job took a couple of hours and was surprisingly draining physically but now my PC runs better and the fan/"computer stand" was shiny and clean. The computer was running for the whole time and is still on. No overheating, no shutdowns. Problem apparently solved.