I have an old Dell laptop that occasionally powers itself off for no obvious reason, apparently without loss of data. I assume it is overheating: it uses a 2.4GHz Pentium, not an M series. Do you have any advice on cleaning the ventilation pathways? Tim Gossling
Overheating sounds like the right diagnosis, but cleaning a notebook is tricky. You can remove some visible dust with pipe cleaners, cotton swabs or an artist's paintbrush. However, it's hard to remove large amounts of the sort of muck that notebooks can suck in (from clothes, carpets etc) unless you are willing to take the case apart. If there are strong indications of a build-up of fluff, you could ask a local laptop repair shop to do the job for you.
Blasts of clean dry compressed air can help, and products with long nozzles are sold for the purpose. If you feel around the outside of your laptop while it's running, you should be able to figure out which slots suck air in and which blast it out. Turn the machine off, unplug it, remove the battery and try blowing compressed air into some of the inputs. Don't blow air into any of the drives.
I'm not convinced this will do much good but, done with care, it's not very likely to do much harm.
Your hard drive should be backed up regularly, of course, but make sure any cleaning takes place after a backup, not before!
Backchat: Joachim Stoeber says he used the nozzle of a high-powered vacuum cleaner to suck dust out "through the mesh of the fans where it had entered in the first place. Afterwards: fans again silent, notebook again fast and batteries again lasting for two hours because the fans are not on high speed all the time. It solved my laptop problem and saved me lots of money -- now I don't need a new one anymore."
