Overheated Dell

Ok, here's a new one. My Dell Inspiron 5100 has recently been acting a bit flaky. I first noticed that at various times one of the USB ports would stop working causing my mouse to fail or my Pocket PC to stop synchronizing. Over the last 5 days the machine has begun to intermiitantly power off completely. Not thinking I would find much I Googled the problem. Lo and behold I found this post on the Dell support site that led me to this site where the problem is fully documented.

Turns out it's simply dust building up on the "bottom of the computer heatsink". I downloaded the cool little utilty mentioned on the site to monitor the temperature of the CPU and found that mine was running at 69 or 70 degrees Celsius, too high according to the site. I then followed the directions on the site, got out my little can of Endust Duster (compressed air) and blew it into the fan. A little cloud puffed out and I restarted the machine. The CPU temperature now fluctuates between 54 and 59 degrees most of the time. I noticed that the fan goes on high at 62 degrees. Looks like this will have to be done every couple weeks or so from now on...