Typical - things always break coming up to Christmas

Technically, it's not broken, but one of my laptop's cooling fans is blocked up with dust. It's too blocked to be able to blow it out properly with compressed air, which is annoying. Can't access it through the back panel either. I'd have to remove the back panel, take out all of the chips and gidgets inside, unclip the keyboard, remove the DVD drive, take off the motherboard and then do it from there. Definitely not going to chance something going wrong with it, so that means it'll have to go down to the shop.

The good thing is that the shop is family-run and extremely good! Very reasonable prices. He was the one who told me about the danger of buying chargers from eBay - showed me and mum a burned, charred, twisted mess of a laptop that had been caused by buying a charger from eBay.

The bad thing is that, coming up to Christmas, money is tight, so I've emailed him to ask what the approximate charge is for a fan cleaning. Fingers crossed it won't be too much!    

Hope it wont be too expensive, yes everything seems to go wrong before xmas!!  

Typical isn't it huni I'd try hoovering it first but then again I know nothing about cleaning laptops only the house

Ah well, at least it's something I know can be easily sorted!

I looked up hoovering. Apparently it's a big no-no, as little lightning rods of static charge will actually surround the nozzle, invisible to us, and that can cause damage. Besides which, I'd have to be able to access the fan properly to do it

See El that's were your smarter than me, I'd of just hoovered it and worried about the consequences later  

I hadn't considered it until yesterday, when I was browsing through forums to look for a solution. Somebody on there recommended hoovering, and then somebody else slapped them on the wrist and said not to.

Update: emailed the shop, waiting for a reply. The fan keeps stopping, so I might not be here for a while.

That's a bit of a pain, I would be lost without my laptop  

Rubbish  Hope it doesn't cost you too much to get sorted xx

Turns out that there were strands of my hair wrapped around the fan. As the IT man put it, "it was like a cat's fur ball". It's supposedly fixed, though my fan is still starting up and abruptly cutting off. That may just be normal, so I'm going to leave it and see.

Sounds like my Hoover with all Molly's hair I have to cut it of the brushes once a month

Did the repair guy say the fan may cut out, are you able to give him a quick call and ask ?

_Hayley_ wrote:Sounds like my Hoover with all Molly's hair I have to cut it of the brushes once a month

Same here with my hair!

Laptop packed UP a little WHILE afTER I PoStED HERE, so I’M USING MUM’s computer (As YOU MighT BE aBLE TO TELL BECAuSe OF THE BUSTED sHIFT KEY).

Probably woN't be fixed until next THursday at the earliEst.

Aww rubbish yes I can tell your using your mums computer

LoVelY isN't it? HELPING TO puT UP tHE CHRiStmas decOratIoNS atM

Oooh lovely, pics later please xx

I'll leave that up to mum

Keyboard seems to have fixed itself again!

Why not just replace the keyboard with a cheapy one for now ???  

Because this is a cheapy one No point getting another cheapy one if it's going to misbehave like this!