Fixing My Aspire 4520

Operating on a laptop-wife is as exciting as watching Scrubs and House

This is my fourth attempt to operate on my Acer Aspire 4520, and this time I was successful. Here's the chronology of all the operations:

• 1st attempt: She overheats easily lately and hence I suspect it was her heat sink. An triple bypass operation to reach her heat sink was unsuccessful due to unfamiliarity with 2008 Acer models.
• 2nd attempt: Another attempt to reach the heat sink. Stopped halfway when I got hungry and remembered there is an assignment due tomorrow. I needed my wife and abandoned the operation. Her screen begins to flicker.
• 3rd attempt: Direct attempt to fix her flickering screen problem. It worked but unfortunately I did not manage to reach the illusive heat sink. To make things worse the keyboard was rendered useless. Bought a RM35 external foldable keyboard to replace the defunct one.
• 4th attempt: Used my previous experience on a Compaq nx6120. This time I reached her heat sink, cleared the clog, cleaned her other dusty compartments, fixed the keyboard and is now a happy man :) Typing out this post using the built-on keyboard and can feel the air flowing from the cooling vents again.
  

My tools of the the trade. Time to play House, MD :)

Me reaching the heat sink (poking the hole, somewhere there). The sight of finally reaching the sink after almost 1 semester was exhilirating & exciting.

It may look overwhelming. But laptops come in very few and simple parts like car engines. It has a motherboard, disk drive, RAM, heat sink, DVD drive, wireless card, LCD screen, keyboard and the rest are frames & casings.

Crikey! Look at that beast! DUST BUNNIES! CLOGGING MY COOLING FAN!

Urgh more clogged compartments. These bunnies have been living prosperously in my laptop to the point of slowing her performance. Sorry bunnies. Time to go.
My 3rd attempt left me with 3 extra screws. Thankfully this time I have 1 left. Not sure where it belongs. Oh well hope it's no biggie.
"SHE LIVES!" exulted Megatron. My Aspire 4520 now feels like 2 months after purchase. Cheers mate!

Why clean the heat sink? Read this older post.