When you 'Overhaul' a Laptop, what do you do?

[GoStumpy]

Thought this may become a resource for useful tips & tricks for cleaning out our laptops, both hardware and software.

I've done two today, first two ever, and I am surprised at how easy it really is.

Complete dis-assembly, clean out the heatsink & fan (crammed full of dust and hair!!), clean keyboard/screen/case.. Software I did updates, disk cleanup, disk De-fragment, and made sure all drivers were up to date... Both turned out wonderfully!

What else could I be doing? What are some fun stories you've had?

Discuss! ()

 

[themillak]

i had to update the bios on my laptop so I could find out how much battery life i had left in linux.

 

[Meaker10]

Overhaul?

Take one Acer aspire 7738G with the following specs:

1600x900 screen
Q9000
GT240M 1GB DDR3
4GB ram
Intel 5100 wireless
2x500GB 5400rpm HDD

Dismantle the unit and insert the following:

1920x1080 Screen
Q9200 ES unlocked
8GB DDR3 (Kingston hyper-X)
HD6770M 1GB GDDR5
Bigfoot killer-N 1102 wireless
1x128GB SSD 1x 750GB 7200rpm HDD

That's an overhaul

 

[fleshconsumed]

When you 'Overhaul' a Laptop, what do you do?
- I buy a new one...

 

[Pardus]

Thought this may become a resource for useful tips & tricks for cleaning out our laptops, both hardware and software.

I've done two today, first two ever, and I am surprised at how easy it really is.

Complete dis-assembly, clean out the heatsink & fan (crammed full of dust and hair!!), clean keyboard/screen/case.. Software I did updates, disk cleanup, disk De-fragment, and made sure all drivers were up to date... Both turned out wonderfully!

What else could I be doing? What are some fun stories you've had?

Discuss! ()

The real question is why do you have a laptop crammed with someone else's hair inside?

 

[Meaker10]

I did a clean out recently and removed all my heatsinks, used TIM clean on the core and VRM circuitry, took out the old pads (which had been used on more than one application) with high performance ones, and put in some MX-4 thermal paste.

 

[el_brio]

Disassemble, clean, swap out the HD with a SSD and do a fresh install of OS and drivers.

 

[WildW]

I'm generally surprised that a lot of manufacturers seem to offer pretty good service manuals for laptops now. A colleague asked me to look at his laptop a while back - an HP machine that was overheating, so I figured I'd remove the CPU heatsink and reapply thermal gunk. Followed the excellent service manual until I'd gotten the heatsink off, and realised that I'd taken apart pretty much every last component that could be taken apart.

Was very pleased when it worked again after reassembly

 

[Charlie98]

Actually, I'm upgrading my business laptop as we speak... er, type. I upgraded the Pentium M processor last week and my new 160GB WD HDD is formatting right now (PATA... no SSD ) I have some new RAM on the way...

I was surprised at a) how easy it all came apart, and b) with the exception of the heat sink, how clean it still was. This particular lappy bounced around the cab of a truck with me for about a year down in dusty south Texas and Loosiana... I was astonished. Taking a laptop down really isn't the daunting task I thought it was... just a lot of those little itty-bitty screws...



I'll stick with a fresh install of XP SP2 for now, I'm just not very pleased with Win7.

 

[SandEagle]

-replaced HDD with SSD
-installed fresh copy on Win7 x64
-pulled out 2x4GB memory, replaced with 2x8GB.
-updated BIOS

I'll stick with a fresh install of XP SP2 for now, I'm just not very pleased with Win7.

i wasn't too thrilled with Win7 either at first, but after configuring it and using it more and more, it really is leaps and bounds better than XP. I tried using XP again and no way am I going back

 

[janas19]

Replaced older hard drive with new faster hard drive. Clean installed Windows.

That's pretty much it, worked like a charm.

 

[GoStumpy]

The real question is why do you have a laptop crammed with someone else's hair inside?

Good winter hobby-turned-business (when it starts making money, lol). I've been cleaning out co-workers and friends laptops for $50 a pop... Fun for me, not a waste of time ($$$-wise) and they're overjoyed that it runs better than new...

About Windows7... I can't believe how anyone couldn't love it... It's better in every single way over XP... But lets not start that argument

 

[zCypher]

Received my Lenovo x120e with 2GB RAM and 320GB 5400rpm WD Blue. Nuh uh.. no way. Ordered 2x4GB Corsair DDR3-1333 SODIMM and ADATA S510 120GB SSD, plus fresh install of Windows 7. The ah heck is an entirely new machine now it seems, boots up insanely fast and everything is much snappier than before. Having said that, it's nowhere near as fast as my desktop and the E350 APU is a huge bottleneck even during basic use (handles firefox miserably). Can handle multimedia just fine when it supports hardware acceleration, but fails miserably when it's software rendered. Example, it can play any 1080p content flawlessly which is sweet - but try and load Netflix HD, LOL. Not happening. Thanks, Silverlight.

Still a pretty sweet deal since the laptop was only $377 directly from Lenovo, but I do wish it had C2D-like power.

 

[GoStumpy]

I'm scouring around my local pawnshops for a laptop, they seem to be selling in the ~$250 range no matter what brand/age they are.

Going to keep looking until I find one with a decent video card