Mildly Amusing Laptop Story

I have an older Dell Inspiron XPS (3.4 Ghz P4 w/ 256MB Radeon Mobility 9800). When I first got it, I played lots of Matrix Online with it and it ran the game perfectly. I've since replaced it with a better rig but over the holidays, my son wanted to give MxO a try. So I pulled out the XPS and fired it up for him. His buddy wanted to play too so he borrowed my girlfriends Compaq X6000 (3.0 Ghz P4 w/ 256MB Mobility X600).

Long story made longer, they fired up the game and almost immediately I noticed that the Compaq was way outperforming the XPS. In fact, not only was it outperforming it, the XPS was basically not able to run the game. This made me vastly disgruntled as I know the Mobility 9800 is a better card than the X600 - not to mention the extra .4 Ghz on the CPU (I know - ultimately it's not a big deal - bear with me). The Compaq should not outperform the XPS - but it was. More to the point, the XPS ran the game just fine when I first bought it, and now it wasn't. I knew something was wrong. I tried re-installing the Video drivers. No go. I tried uninstalling the drivers, used NFR to remove all the latent driver files and re-installed. No go. So I bit the bullet and blew away the entire installation and re-installed XP from scratch. I figured that would fix the problem if anything would.

Still no go. At this point I've invested about 7 hours in trying to make Matrix Online run on the laptop and nothing has worked. I give up and go to bed. The next day I wake up and go back to it. I fire up the computer and the game and behold, it runs the game just fine - for about two minutes. Then all of a sudden the internal fans start blasting at high speed and the game starts slowing down again. An idea dawns in my head and I power off the unit, flip it over and look at the fan intakes. They are about 75% occluded by dust.

I pull out my trusty tool kit and unscrew the fan holders and pull them out. And I'm shocked. The intakes may have been about 75% blocked but the heat sinks that the fans were designed to cool: 100% blockage. There was literally a carpet of dust draped across both heat sinks. It was impossible for the fans to blow any air through them whatsoever. I whipped out my trusty Pfft! and my vacuum cleaner and went to town. Five minutes later, the internals of the XPS were as dust free as possible.

I replaced everything and fired up the game and Viola! - it ran perfectly - just as I remembered. It was just amazing the difference the dust made in the laptops operating temperature which in turn made a huge difference in the playability of a game on that laptop.

So my MOTD: check your fans, intakes, and heat sinks... especially if you live in the Southwest...

 

Dust is a tricky little sucker. A good fan cleaning every 6 months or so tends to keep them pretty clean though. I had a similar problem happen to me, except my computer would just shut off from overheating.

 

Thanks for sharing your experience. It is very important to keep your fans clean. Your GPU can overheat and burn out if you don't regularly clear the fans and heatsinks of dust that settles there over time.

Read through the cooling guide for more information on the procedure.

 

Dust bunnies 1, Neo 0.

 

"Whoa."

Come on, someone had to.

 

Used to have a long-haired, constantly shedding dog and two cats who did the same, my desktop's fans would clog like mad. I bought a bunch of filters and cut them to size, but they'd just wind up clogged after a day or two. I did some 'creative engineering' (duct tape, sweat) and put the filter mounts on the OUTSIDE of the box. That way I could just run my hand, a pen, etc over the filter and clear it out quite a bit without having to pop the case or fiddle with the fan mounts in the case while working upside down under my desk.

 

We have two pet bunnies that live with us. They have a huge cage (5 foot wide, 2 deep and about 4 high) in the living room and they loose lots of fur. They shed a few times a year and when they do, you can litteraly pull on the hair with your hand and it'll come off. So the dust bunnies we have are really dust bunnies!!

We find some pretty big ones from time to time! "Look George! I found you a brother!"