Jette's co-worker complained about that her 4 year old computer was slow, probably filled with virus and malware and needed to be fixed, so Jette called me up and asked me if i wanted to take a look at it.
"Sure" i said "Just remember that they bring the Windows CD and do a backup of whatever they need before you take it with you....so later that night, she brought it home with her from work.
The quick fix involved just nuking the drive and re-install Windows XP for them and replace their 4 year old expired Norton with something that worked, a couple of hours of maintenance really while i do other things in between. I started her up and entered the BIOS just to have a look at the hardware which was pretty good, a 3.06 P4, 1GB and a 250GB drive. A very nice system 4 years ago.
Starting the process, i always take a peek inside and clean everything out for them as an extra service since i only once have seen a clean as in brand new looking while servicing, and i was told that there could be some buildup inside there since they have a couple of cats.
On these Dells, there is a little notch at the back that you just press downward to remove the side-cover which is kind of neat, so i pressed the notch and removed the cover to find 4 cm, or almost 2 inches of dust/hair on everything that could accumulate. Even the dust on the thin fan wires was thicker than the actual wire!
The two fans, one for the cpu and one outtake fan had stopped completely because of the buildup.
I have never seen anything like it before. (except for the computer in the US where roaches found the power supply unit to be a perfect home for their hive, but thats another story)
With some superglue, i think i could have transformed two bald cats into the most hairy cats on the planet, but i scrapped that idea and got to work.
Now, we don't have a terrace anymore, and with -16C outside today, taking it outside was really not an option, so i opened the kitchen door and started blowing things out armed with two cans of compressed air, but what i did not think about was the pressure difference between cold and hot air, so as soon as i started blowing, it went 4 cm outside before coming back inside with me.
After much cursing and vacuuming, i finally finished an hour later, and i didn't even get started on the power supply unit which i am going to suggest they replace before it catches on fire. All the ports outside on the case was clogged with hair and grime.
The nuke + install only took 40 minutes + windows update a couple of times so that went faster than cleaning it.
I tried taking some pictures with my phone, but it's so old that you can barely see the color difference so i think i am going to have to order one so that i can take some pictures next time i do a service
So, does anyone know where i can get a mini air compressor somewhere? There are more compressed air cans around here than beer cans, and that can't be good
