Wow! It’s been 6 months since I last posted a blog post 😐 I have been bogged down with so much going on but I have made a list of things I’d like to blog about:)

Ok, so I’ve had my Dell Inspiron 1525 since 2009 and it’s been a total gem. Apart from one hard drive failure, which was fixed under the warrantee, I have had no major problems with it (Masha’Allah). So it goes without saying that I was totally baffled when the laptop kept turning itself off, totally randomly. Now I have dropped the laptop a few times which has resulted in a loose screen which has now been secured into place with new hinges and a piece of card. Naturally, I thought this might be the issue and somehow the broken hinge was causing the power to turn off. I endured this for a couple of days, but when it kept happening repeatedly during an iTunes sync with my iPhone I had enough!

My first laptop (a Fujitsu one) had an issue of overheating and I wasn’t even able to watch a whole DVD without it closing down on me. Needless to say that was refunded pretty quickly. Based on that experience, this was my next diagnosis for my Dell laptop. Although the laptop wasn’t scorching it was still pretty hot. After a bout of surfing the net and Googling around, I came across various forums that said it could be an accumulation of dust near the cooling fan. This was a very common problem so I thought I’d investigate. I don’t normally like taking my laptop apart as I’m always scared I’ll mess something up but armed with a tweezer (don’t ask! Why can you never find screwdrivers when you need them?) I started to take the laptop apart.

I must stress that it is REALLY REALLY important that you disconnect the battery and the charger before opening up the laptop as you could hurt yourself if there is still electricity running through the laptop. So the first thing I did was battle with the screws shown in the picture 🙂 QCLJ1IwVNORiuEWK It was a lengthy battle as the screws were quite tight, but after a few prayers and loads of patience they came out (yay!).

Again, note how the battery has been removed already. Also, that’s not my hand in the picture! The screws are all the same size so you don’t need to remember which screw came out of which hole. however, they are tiny so make sure you keep them safe until you need them again.

Ok, so after I got these screws out I had a dig around to find the cooling fan. Having never seen the inside of my laptop I had to resort to Google again to make sure I was on the right track. Once I opened it, I lifted the part circled (top right) in the picture and surprise surprise found a few clumps of dust:( One thing I must say is that the part doesn’t lift fully so please don’t force it as you could end up breaking something vital. I lifted it just enough to run the tweezer around it. sYGBWxQ5SEPiZJXr

So once I put everything back together, it was the moment of truth. My first niggle was whether the laptop would come back on or had I messed something up. Alhamdullilah, not only did the laptop power up well but the problem was also fixed 🙂 It still does get a little warm underneath but atleast it’s not powering off:)

Last thing before I go, if you are really unsure of what you are doing, it is best to take the laptop to someone who knows what thay are doing or are confident enough to open up the laptop 🙂