Comments on: Taking apart and cleaning Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop

By: Luiz

Luiz — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 23:51:24 +0000

It is not necessary to remove the heatsink assembly, and may not be that desirable. I’ve tried this with 3 dells this week and the processor often pops out too, risking bent pins. Easy to just remove the screws holding the fan in place, tilt back, and scrape the usually pelletized ball of gook of the heatsink. You can also blow with compressed air from outside the laptop (from the back left) to get 100% of the dust out.

By: t dub

t dub — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:12:38 +0000

Thanks for guide. I tried to do this myself by attacking from the bottom with no success. After following your instructions I pulled a dust clump the size of a small animal out of the fan cavity. Runs quiet and cool now.

By: Gary

Gary — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:25:12 +0000

I cleaned the heat sink fins on my 5100.

The fan was running all the time on low and go to high with anything intense going on. The air coming out the back was quite hot. I took the CPU/fan/heat sink assembly out and blew it out with compressed air. There appeared to only be a thin film of dust over the inside of the fins. Not too bad.

After cleaning, the fan doesn’t run much at all. when the machine has been on for several minutes the fan will come on for a few seconds and then turn off again for a minute or two before coming on again. It really runs a lot cooler and the air coming out when the fan is blowing is much cooler. The fan took so long to start the first time that I thought I had left it unplugged or broken something. I took it back apart to check the fan plug and then had to leave it on much longer before it came on the first time. I have had it since it was new and I can’t remember the fan ever turning off completely. Probably just my memory going bad.

Thanks

Now if I could just get some more range from my internal wireless when I am in Hotels. Might have to hack an external antenna.

Gary

By: Laptop Tech

Laptop Tech — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 05:01:06 +0000

mark,

my dell 5100 laptop was coming on for a second then going off now there is no power at all new battery fully charged and new power cord what causes this

If the laptop shows no signs of life with fully charged battery and new AC adapter, most likely you have a problem with the motherboard.

By: mark

mark — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:41:29 +0000

my dell 5100 laptop was coming on for a second then going off now there is no power at all new battery fully charged and new power cord what causes this

By: Laptop Tech

Laptop Tech — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 03:59:17 +0000

mike,

I followed all directions for cleaning fan, changing thermal grease, and it still shuts off in 5 seconds. I tried to boot from a usb stick, and same thing. What do I look for next?

Can you see the cooling fan spinning? Maybe you have a faulty fan?

By: mike

mike — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:11:34 +0000

I followed all directions for cleaning fan, changing thermal grease, and it still shuts off in 5 seconds. I tried to boot from a usb stick, and same thing. What do I look for next?

By: Sylvester

Sylvester — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 01:54:57 +0000

I want to do this without spending a bundle of money!!

By: Sylvester

Sylvester — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 01:53:30 +0000

I want to clean up my lap top, but I have lost my restoration disk, where can I get another one from?

By: mark

mark — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:38:42 +0000

I have a DELL inspiron 5150, 512mram, 3.06GHz. I downloaded http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/index.html. While running a stress test using prime95. while the cpu is at 100% the cpu temp peaked at 72%. What would the normal Peak temp be at 100% and at idle.

I intend to dissassemble and clean my laptop in the comming days. I am very interested in the difference this will make.

Regards Mark