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The following question was presented:

OK, so I decided to spruce up an old laptop and show William the inner workings of a computer at the same time. I have an old laptop that's running crazy slow (even after re-imaging and having nothing on it) and the fan is constantly on. So, obviously it needs the dust cleaning out of the fan and re-silvering the heat sinks on the chips. Not a big deal really. At what point during my computer repair did I realize a trip to the eRecylcing center was in my near future?

Results:

When the CPU pinged off the ceiling was the clear winner with 83% of the votes selected from the following:

• When the compressed air squirted liquid on the motherboard (17%)
• When the screen cracked (0%)
• When the CPU pinged off the ceiling (83%)
• When I had more screws left over after I put it back together (0%)
• When the fan connection snapped (0%)
• When the screwdriver snapped (0%)
• When the smell of burning came after plugging it back in (0%)
• When I heard the loud grinding noise (0%)

Graphic of Results:

Analysis:

Wow! Were you like all in my kitchen when I did this? Yes, it was indeed when the CPU pinged off the ceiling. I picked it up and showed it to William and told him on no account should this be removed from the computer. He was disinterested, so didn't really pick up on what I was saying. Right, so the “in my defense” part ..... I took the computer to bits properly with no problems. It had been running insanely hot for a while. I undid the screws holding the heat sinc down and pulled it up. Nothing happened. So I applied a bit more pressure. Still nothing. So I gave it a good old yank (ooh err missus) and it came off (ooh err missus twice in one sentence). It just the fan with heat sinks came off and the CPU was still attached to the heat sinc and not the motherboard. So I pushed it off the heat sinc and it flew up and hit the ceiling.

If you're interested, the compressed air did squirt liquid over the motherboard, but this was after the CPU incident, so that wasn't the point at which I realized I'd broken it beyond repair.

The screen did not crack and I did not have more screws left over when I put it back together. The fan connection did snap, but that was on the second attempt. After putting it back together and finding it didn't work, I tried a second time to see if wiggling the CPU helped at all. It didn't, ha ha ha. The screwdriver did indeed snap. Right at the beginning, but that didn't damage anything so was before I realized the computer was broken.

Last, there was no smell of burning and no grinding noise. It was really disappointing to be honest. I turned it on and the power light just starts flashing and nothing else happens. I googled this and couldn't find an exact troubleshoot, but one forum did report that if the power light just flashes it means the CPU or similar critical component can not be found. They actually listed CPU. I mean, I could find it. Just don't think it was connected how it was supposed to be. Anyway, I would have thought it would have been more interesting if smoke started to billow out of it and sparks were flying, but no, pretty boring really.