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Clevo 888E heatsink cleaning->PROBLEM

post #1 of 22
12/7/04 at 3:28am
Thread Starter 
greetings folks,

i tried to clean my heatsink earlier and now my laptop won't boot. powers up, i don't think the bios loads, the fan is on (and the air is *cool*) and i keep hearing a shifty click as it checks the cd-rom regularly.

did i break it? since i'm not under warranty, is this going to cost me an arm and a leg? or have i got a shot at fixing it myself? i have cleaned the heatsink before, and i took the battery out first. also, i thought i smelt something like paint/plastic before this all went down but thought it was something in the AC at work.

additionally, have y'all got any advice for cleaning the 888E heatsink? i'm a little frustrated that i can't get to the fans to really give them a good cleaning and that the heatsink can't be removed, and i don't want to take the bottom off completely without knowing what i'm doing.

any advice? also, is there anything else i can do to help my laptop's performance?

additionally, i had to get a new ac adapter, which i bought new off Ebay and it turned out to be the same serial number and model as the old one. before i got it, the cord on the old adapter had frayed and right before i stopped using it, the battery that seemed to have a full charge lasted all of 6 minutes (it usually lasts about an hour).

any insight would be greatly appreciated!


puthupa
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post #2 of 22
12/8/04 at 9:40pm
Thread Starter 
no one has any suggestions?
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post #3 of 22
12/9/04 at 2:16am
I have an 888E (aka 8887). My heatsink comes off. Remove the cover. Remove the 4 corner screws on the heatsink. If the label on the heatsink has numbers, remove those 4 screws in the order on the label. I think mine were "spring-loaded" but they do come off. Note the tightness level, as you want to screw them back in, in the same order, you want to tighten them somewhat firm, but not torqued tooooo much. When the screws are out you have to gently jiggle the heatsink to get it out. Part of it is under the backplate I think. Be gentle, but it does come out. Use compressed air with a straw attachement to blow out the heatsink. Blow out the fans from the back plate into the fan. Make them spin. Mine haven't got that dirty and a good wind occasionally isn't gonna kill them. With the heatsink out you can clean and Arctic Silver it and clean the top of the CPU. There are thorough threads in the forum on that. Good luck!
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post #4 of 22
12/9/04 at 12:29pm
Thread Starter 
good to know. i should get me some Arctic Silver before i try it.

of course, the real issue now is that the laptop's not booting, so i need to figure that out. i've got cats, so i really need to give the fans a proper cleaning anyway.
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post #5 of 22
12/9/04 at 1:06pm
I see in another thread you downloaded the service manual so that is a good reference. The keyboard comes off quite easily so you can check for burned connections. Use a small screwdriver or item to push down the 3 "catches" at the top of the keyboard, then slowly lift it out as it's still connected to a thin connector ribbon. Pull the ribbon connection end out of its slot and it's free. You can look at your RAM, make sure it's seated, and look around for other burns. The manual and other threads in the forum tell you how to remove HDDs and check connections, but it "shouldn't" be that drastic if you haven't fiddled with much in the first place. Hope you get it running.
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post #6 of 22
12/9/04 at 5:22pm
Thread Starter 
thanks again - looking to acquire some Arctic Silver today (i'm guessing online is the only way?) so i can get the laptop back up and running.

would you know what kind of upgrades are possible on mine? i wouldn't mind bumping the processor up in the futurem though i suspect next year i'll have a new laptop and this will be come the house's official desktop.
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post #7 of 22
12/9/04 at 5:31pm
Here is what Sager was doing a year ago. They don't sell the 8890 anymore but if they still have the parts they might do it. You'd have to call Sager. ALSO, to take advantage of the memory and MOBO upgrade you might have to order a CPU upgrade. Still, with the MOBO I think you would at least get the 9700 ATI 128MB chip I believe. You can't buy the parts on the market and do it yourself. The ATI chip is part of the MOBO. A year ago it was a good idea, but with all the new hardware on the market, I'm thinking I'll sell my 8887 for 900-1000 and buy a new, better machine for 2000-2500. Of course a top of the line 9860 would cost a lot more than that.
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post #8 of 22
12/12/04 at 10:35am
Thread Starter 
i did find that thread before. i hope i can sell this one, but i probably won't have the extra $1000 for something new for a year or so. and i want a Centrino next time - i use the laptop for music production and i would *love* to carry around something lighter.

thanks for your suggestions - i'm gonna get the AS and try to work on my laptop today.
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post #9 of 22
12/12/04 at 8:28pm
Thread Starter 
so... after taking it apart, checking connections and arctic silvering, it now boots ... and shuts down after 2 seconds. back to pro-star it goes, unless someone can recommend a good and less expensive repair joint in the ny metro area...
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post #10 of 22
12/12/04 at 10:07pm
Bummer. I assume you're out of warranty. Here is on repair site I surfed on: http://www.okcomputerservices.com/states/new_york.htm . Surf on Clevo repair New York. Good luck.
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post #11 of 22
12/14/04 at 1:47pm
Just a note on cleaning the heatsink a bit easier.

I removed the 4 small screws holding the metal cover leaving the 4 spring loaded screws alone. With the cover out of the way I took a small pipe cleaner and ran through the copper foils to remove the dust off them and then bent one and made wide hook and went behind the copper towards the fans and scooped out the build up there.

It does a fairly good job of cleaning and doesn't require unseating the heatsink.

As for your problem on it not booting have you tried to remove the battery, and power and then pull the keyboard off take out the ram and bios battery. Let it sit for 5 minutes then plug in the AC, power it on and see if it boots? If it does it should give a bios error and then just shut down and put everything back together.
good luck..
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post #12 of 22
12/14/04 at 4:39pm
Thread Starter 
MrMsyvc: thank you VERY much for the link. pro-star's sporadic email responses make me leery of sending them my laptop, especially since they haven't responded to my statement that i would not allow them to formay my hd under any circumstances.

gezs: i haven't tried that, but i certainly will - thank you for the suggestion. so i take out the RAM & Bios battery, put the regular battery back in and try to boot-up? out of curiosity, what would this mean? i'm not too hopeful of getting things going, but anything is worth a shot at this point.
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post #13 of 22
12/15/04 at 10:44pm
At one point my laptop stopped booting up.. I was told to try the above which reset the bios and fixed my problem. No idea what caused the issue but it worked.

Take the keyboard off to access the ram and bios battery. Remove both and then wait 5 minutes so the capacitors discharge and the bios resets. You then plug in AC or put in the main battery and try to boot. If it works then the laptop will boot and give a bios error. At this point I shut it off replaced everything and havent had a problem since.
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post #14 of 22
12/16/04 at 4:13pm
Thread Starter 
cool - will give it a shot. pro-star finally emailed back, too.
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post #15 of 22
12/20/04 at 12:07am
ok, just thought i'd mention my experience with cleaning - doubt its your problem, but worth double-checking. when i removed the heatsink, apparently the thermal compound was sticky enough to pull the processor slightly out of the zif socket. this, of course, shouldnt happen... but it did. i didnt notice at first, put everything back together and was met with the same sort of situation you were.

When i disassembled again, i pulled the plate off surrounding the processor under the heatsink. When i lifted the lever on the zif socket, the processor fell into place. everything is back to normal now - thank goodnes.

To make sure everything was cool i put some new thermal compound on there because some had come off during cleaning. running swimmingly now.

The zif socket SHOULD be designed so that closing the lever exerts enough force on the processor pins and you shouldnt be able to pull it out without releasing the lever again. But apparently, the zif in this machine dosent exert quite enough pressure.

good luck...

p.s. aussie, my dust bunny was worse than yours in your picure, btw. it leapt out demanding a cheesesteak and voting rights.
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post #16 of 22
12/21/04 at 9:55pm
Thread Starter 
pardon my ignance, but i'm guessing a 'zif socket' is whatever the cpu plugs into? that i have not checked. i'm about to try gezs' suggestion...
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post #17 of 22
12/21/04 at 10:45pm
Thread Starter 
vvalerio: my cpu was loose. this helped to get it from the '2 second shutdown' back to my original problem of it constantly checking the cd-rom (1st boot device), thus not getting to the hd. and the screen is blank too.

thanks to all for your help and suggestions - i hope santa brings me a repair bill that won't give me an ulcer!
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post #18 of 22
12/23/04 at 2:22am
Quote:
Originally Posted by vvalerio
p.s. aussie, my dust bunny was worse than yours in your picure, btw. it leapt out demanding a cheesesteak and voting rights.
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post #19 of 22
2/21/05 at 9:45pm
Encountered the same issue over the weekend and thanks to this thread - a little de/re-zifification and back in business - so thanks vvalerio & co.
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post #20 of 22
2/21/05 at 10:02pm
Thread Starter 
in the end, all my laptop needed was ... cleaning. apparently the ventilation needed more cleaning, though it didn't look that bad to me. Pro-Star said that they do a lot of cleaning. all in all, the damage including shipping was $140, so that wasn't too bad.
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