Stan Olson’s Blog

A friend of mine recently brought me their laptop to revive from the dead. It needed a new hard drive, more memory, Windows XP reinstall, and a new CPU fan. The first 3 items I took care of as soon as the parts arrived and had everything running great. I ordered the CPU fan off eBay which took quite some time to receive. (thanks USPS!) I had never replaced a CPU fan on a laptop before, so I consulted Dell’s service manual for further instructions. The removal of the CPU fan was pretty simple as it required just removing 2 screws and unplugging the power connector. However, to get to it you pretty much had to remove everything else in the laptop:

-Remove Battery
-Remove Memory
-Remove Hard Drive
-Remove Wireless card
-Remove Keyboard
-Remove Display
-Remove Palm Rest
-Remove Microprocessor Thermal-Cooling assembly

The first 4 items were simple to remove as all were located on the bottom of the system. I won’t go into great length on each step of the process, but it was very time consuming as I didn’t want to break anything. Once I got everything removed, I installed the new fan and carefully reassembled the laptop. I booted it up into Windows and ran my system fan utility which lets me control the speed of the fan. When I cranked it up to max speed, it made a horrendous noise. This wasn’t good as now I’d have to repeat the process and remove everything again. (doh!) Once I got to the fan, I removed it and compared it with the old fan. Everything looked the same except the new fan had a slightly higher top that the other. I’m guessing this was making contact with the bottom side of the keyboard or side of the case to make the horrendous noise. I decided to clean and oil the old fan to see if it would work again. I got a little lazy which almost ended up screwing up the whole system. I plugged the old fan back in and powered the system on without putting everything back together first. I wanted to see if the thing would spin up at all. It seemed to work fine, but the system decided to lock up on me while booting up. I figured at this point I’d go ahead and put everything back together and see if that fixed the problem.

I booted it up and got a bunch of errors on the screen. (good job Stan, good job…) It was spewing out numerous memory errors which lead me to believe I’d zapped one or both of my memory chips. To make matters worse, the screen was flickering and had static all over it. (oh holy crap!) Seeing this made me think I’d tightened a screw too tight and nicked the cable going to the display. I thought for sure I’d fried the system, but I didn’t panic and started troubleshooting. I took the system apart yet again and reseated the display connector and made sure I wasn’t squashing the cable. I also reseated both memory cards to see if that was the problem.

The moment of truth was now here as I powered up the system. The BIOS beeped at me telling me that the memory size had changed. (oh no) Luckily, it was a good thing as it was seeing both memory sticks this time. (whew!) I booted up into Windows and the display was normal again. (double whew!)  I tested the fan with my program and it powered up to full speed with no problem and no loud noise. Not wanting to push my luck anymore, I called it a success and packed it away in the case.

It was a good learning experience for me as I’d never gone that deep into a laptop before. Thanks to Dell for providing a service manual on their website, I couldn’t have done it without them. (well I probably could have but would have broken something for sure) :-) I took a few pictures during the disassembly and have posted them here.

I’ll admit it, after Hill gave up 5 runs in the 1st inning I figured we were doomed. The Cubs fought back though and had it 5-3 in the bottom of the 9th. Lee hit a sacrifice fly to score Soriano and made it a 5-4 game. With 1 on base and 2 outs in the 9th, Ramirez hit a dramatic 2 run shot to give the Cubs the 6-5 victory! 7 wins in a row now, finally back to .500. This is a pretty amazing run and hopefully we can continue throughout the weekend. GO CUBS!! :)

Game summary from Cubs.com

Well the Cubs won their 6th game in a row today and completed their 2nd sweep in a row. Zambrano wasn’t too dominant but it was definitely enough to subdue the Rockies from mounting a serious charge. Hopefully this momentum continues as the Brewers come in to town this weekend for the most anticipated series of the year so far. This is where we will see which team has the stuff to get it done. The Cubs really need to win 2 out of 3 to have any chance at catching the red hot Brewers. It’s getting exciting though as the Cubs are just 1 game under .500 now.

Game summary from Cubs.com

This is what happens when you stop watching the game. I shut it off in the 8th as the Cubs had a 4 run lead at that point. I went to bed and flipped on XM to listen to Pat/Ron call the remainder of the game. We scored another run in the 8th to make it a 5 run game and I figured we had this one in the bag. When Colorado hit the home run to take the lead in the top of the 9th I was in disbelief. I shared Santo’s feeling of devastation, I was totally shocked. Granted this is the Cubs and they’ve blown leads in the 9th this year (Mets series) but I just didn’t expect it.

Of course what happened next really shocked me. Cubs load the bases in the bottom of the 9th with 2 outs. With Soriano at the plate, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Part of me thought he’d strike out while another thought brought a ground out to mind. As soon as he hit the ball, Hughes and Santo went crazy and I knew we’d won. The 9th inning had the feeling of that Bears/Cardinals monday night game. Emotions were all over the place, what a game. This might be one of those games that gets the team rolling on a long streak. Yeah the Brewers won but the Cubs can’t worry about that. We just have to keep winning and then meet up with the Brewers this weekend to really see what we’re made of. 3 games under .500 now with 4 wins in a row, keep it going Cubbies! What a game!

Game summary from Cubs.com

Another low scoring pitching battle today as the Cubs sneaked out a victory 2-1. Soriano hit another lead off home run in the 1st which gave the Cubs a quick lead which did not last long. After the White Sox tied it up in the bottom of the 1st, the game stayed tied until the 9th inning. Angel Pagan scored from 3rd on a squeeze bunt put down by Ryan Theriot. Small ball at last for the Cubs, kudos to Lou for doing something he doesn’t like to do. Maybe we can ’squeeze’ out the sweep on Sunday. :)

Game summay from Cubs.com