like a phoenix, risen from the ashes...

This post is dedicated to anyone Googling for "overheating problems for HP Pavilion dv4000"...

For a couple of weeks now, my HP portable has been getting very hot underneath at the back, at which point it unceremoniously powers down. I searched for other people with the same problem and found many.

Well, I'm delighted to report that the problem is trivial to fix, and cheaply too!

The idiots at HP designed the portable so that the intake to the cooling fan is on the underside of the machine, so if you put it down on a bed, or a particularly plush carpet, it blocks. The fan also gets blocked if - like me - you've had it for over a year, and have never once blown out the dust bunnies!

So that's the fix... just grab a can of compressed air (or your home vacuum) and blow through the inlet and outlet cooling vents. The outlet is at the rear left as you face the keyboard, and the inlet is on the underside about three inches in from the back.

Now my machine is nice and cool again, and I saved myself the cost of a new portable :-) (Although truth be told, I did actually buy myself one of the Walmart pre-black-friday specials for about $350 last week, thinking I was going to be needing a backup soon...)

By the way the Walmart machine is quite nice, though there are odd things about it that you have to do a fair bit of net.homework to master. Also it's not a good choice if you want a Linux portable. If you do, put vmware on it and get your linux fix that way for now.

Circuit City was selling a similar machine this morning for $270. At this rate we'll be hitting One Laptop Per Child prices with regular portables soon :-)


G