My Notebook PC's Ailments

Black Hole

May contain traces of nut
HP G61, Win7 Home Premium, Rollback RX disk management

For one thing, there's the occasional disk thrashing which makes everything else go mega slowly. Maybe, just maybe, that's something to do with Rollback, since I can't see what's doing it in Windows Resource Monitor.

What I am more worried about is the fan. I have previously had a go at dismantling and cleaning, but I couldn't get past a particular screw. Being a notebook, the fan assembly is custom. A few months ago everything was dandy. The PC started up practically silent, and then after a while the fan started gently, and if I was doing something demanding the fan throttled up.

A few weeks ago, the fan started coming on full blast from the start. I was worried what caused it, but didn't consider it critical because obviously the cooling was running.

Now it has gone to the opposite. No fan at start up until quite late on, when there starts to be a warm smell and the case feels hot, then the fan does start but is quite feeble. This is alarming. I have installed a CPU load and temp monitor, and things seem to tick over at 53°C once the fan is running and at light load; a max of 63°C has been recorded, but the monitor has not been running during an extreme yet.
 
Hellfire. The CPU temperature just reached 91°C, and the fan is just pootling. Something definitely wrong there.

The system went very slow at the same time, so either the CPU is throttling back because of the temperature, or whatever is causing the disk thrashing has sent the CPU temp rocketing. Maybe the disk activity is a normal event, but the temperature extreme causes it to take longer.
 
Assuming your HP G61 has an Intel Pentium Processor T4300 (1M Cache, 2.10 GHz, 800 MHz FSB), I wouldn't let it get any hotter, 91 Deg. C equates to a junction temperature of about 101 Deg. C and the CPU has a Max. junction temperature of 105 Deg. C (Spec. HERE), it's life expectancy at that temperature is likely to be cut short
 
Well now; a previous attempt at disassembly was stymied by a stuck screw holding the wireless module in. I went through all my screwdrivers and eventually found one with enough grip to get it out, and with the help of a downloaded maintenance manual I now have the whole thing in bits and the fan itself extracted from the heat pipe assembly without having to take the heat sink off the CPU (that's a relief).

Even before it was all apart, I could reach the fan blades through an aperture and discovered how stiff it is. There's not a huge amount of dust though. I reckon the unpowered brushless motor should spin a lot more freely than that. Not sure what I can do about it, some Internet research might come up with something.
 
I've ordered a new fan for £4.38 (with first class post!), but still want to free up this one so I can get busy again.
 
Sh*t that was easy. Needn't have ordered a new one, although it was cheap enough and I'll have a spare in stock.

With a little persuasion (difficult to know how much to use unless you know it will come off) the rotor just pulls off the stator assembly. I made a simple "puller" with a doubled up loop of thin string, so I was pulling on four points around the hub. Then it was just a case of cleaning everything (including down the axial hole), a tiny dab of Vaseline on the shaft (oo-er missus), back together and it spins with a flick (or even a puff).

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Ta Dah! (again)

One PC back together (no left-over screws, and I even worked out where a loose one that was rattling around came from), booted, and used to create this post. Fan idling nicely, maximum CPU temperature since boot: 40°C. Excellent! A three-hour job, could probably do it in 90 mins now.

I cleaned everything with a soft brush as it went back together. There are heat exchanger fins on the end of the heat pipe in the fan exhaust flow, and the fins are only a couple of mm apart, so I blew through them and quite a lot of fluff came out - I guess that's where the smell came from.

I'll still be looking into a new machine though. I reckon I must have had this one for six years.

The monitor software reports it as a dual core Celeron T3100 running at 1896MHz. I couldn't read the chip - it was under the heat sink assembly and I had no intention of disturbing that.
 
(Sorry about the size of the image above, I'll make it smaller... done.)

The replacement fan arrived in the post this morning (excellent service, cheap too). Not that I need it - the CPU temp has not gone above 50°C all day.

As to the age of the HP G61 - I looked it up. Bought in April 2010, replaced the battery pack in 2012.
 
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