Computer Woes Solved

My computer shut down suddenly about half a year ago. I wondered if it had overheated, so I opened it up, found it full of dust, and vacuumed it out. It was fine until a few weeks ago. It shut down again suddenly, during a game in Webkinz. I opened it up, vacuumed out more dust, and it only went a couple days without shutting down again. It did it again, and I was getting worried that I'd be taking a quiz on-line for my class in it might shut down on me.

I e-mailed my dad, asking if he knew where I could find software to monitor the temperature of my computer. He told me to look at Kim Komando's site since she had links to lots of useful free stuff. I found SpeedFan. It looked like my computer was running pretty hot--the "Temp1" was getting up near 90 °C, and my core was getting up around 80 °C. I called my dad because even though I knew what temperature it was operating at, I didn't know what the range should be. His computer was running at a much lower temperature than mine was. We were talking and discussing whether or not I had found all the fans on my computer. At that point I was thinking I might need to add a fan. Anyway, we were arguing about the small fan on my processor. I said I didn't have a small fan but only two big ones. I told him I didn't know where the processor was, anyway. It ended with my taking a picture of the guts of the computer (see above). Anyway, the flash on the computer revealed that there was some dust in the fan on my processor (I think that's what it is--I'm really computer-stupid at times). I hadn't seen it by the light of the computer room (which is also my laundry room, which probably explains some of the problem with dust in my computer).

Anyway, I got out tweezers and manually pulled all the dust I could out of the fan. It was astounding! I have a shot of that dust next to the mouse and tweezers, and the dust has been squished together a bit before the picture was shot. The original volume was quite a bit larger. When I was done, I vacuumed up the crumbs I made.

I checked the temperatures in my computer, and I seem to be holding below 55 °C on "Temp1" (usually below 50 °C), and my core is usually around or below 40 °C.

What a relief! So far my computer hasn't shut down suddenly on me since I cleaned it up. While I'm never 100% that's what caused my computer to shut down, I'm certain enough to quit worrying about another sudden shut-down. I'm so glad I didn't pay anyone to come install another fan for me.