[Scott R]

Originally Posted by azasadny

Dave, Yep the board had bad caps....
You can remove a few small screws and get to the heatsink/CPU on most laptops, but that isn't usually required to clean the dust out... do what Dave suggested with a can of compressed air.

PC's are mechanical devices and there's wear and tear , especially on the hard drive (rotating at 5400rpm). Heat, wear and tear, software issues, dust and dirt, pet hair, cigarette smoke... all do their part to degrade the PC's performance over time and we usually don't notice anything until it fails to boot up.

I can easily rebuild a well-made PC by replacing the hard drive, adding RAM (memory), putting in a better video card (if there are available slots) and then installing Windows 7, installing drivers and tuning the OS. Just like a car, there's some maintenance to be done but these things aren't really meant to last as long as some of use keep them around.

New PC's are so cheap that it's rarely cost effective to upgrade them unless you have the parts available and you know what you're doing and you like the challenge...

Cheap depends on what you want it to do. My new machine arrives on 12/4 and it was 4k, it will likely only last me three years at best.