Sorry everyone! My laptop broke last week. Heat sink and fan totally went dead. That was an interesting experience. I have taken apart and put back together my desktop 100 times for parts and improvements. I had not done anything major on my laptop, save for installing more memory.
So… taking apart and putting together a laptop was another “first” for me. In order to install a new heatsink and fan, it required me to take everything apart: the wireless connector, screen, HD, and motherboard. While I was doing this, I hoped I remembered to reconnect everything back into place because the further I got into my laptop, the more uncharted territory I was in.
The sad thing is that I can see my entire heatsink and fan when I removed the bottom plastic casing, but the casing prevented me from doing an easy install (just as in automobiles, sometimes an easy install isn’t quite what it is supposed to be). After some work, I was able to free everything from the casing and uninstall the heatsink and fan. I scraped the processor of the old cooling glue, wiped it down with some alcohol wipes (its handy to have a wife in the medical field for some of the cleaning supplies), and reapplied new glue to the new heatsink, and screwed the fan back into place.
Going backwards wasn’t that difficult, I was mindful of the peripheral wires that had to be reconnected. I think the only thing I got wrong was screwing my HD back into the slot where there were two sets of screw slots. I forgot to fasten the plastic to the board with one of the sets of screws, so I had to back it up a bit when I realized I had more screws than I started with.
All in all, a great experience. My computer no longer warms my lap (to my dismay as winter approaches), and everything works as it should. I like taking on new and interesting challenges. The unknown is exciting to me and getting projects to work with minimal adjustments are a great confidence builder.