November – 2010 – ~Zero WordPress

Wicked Acer Aspire 4937g

Recently my Acer Aspire 4937g keeps rebooting itself during extensive online gaming.
(To be specific, Red Alert 3 and Garena Warcraft III)

This is not the problem of the hardware, it’s just overheat.
If you had similar problem with me, it’s probably same too.

It’s been more than a year since I purchased this machine,
due to the warranty, I do not dare to open up and clean the fan.
Since the warranty is over now, I think I can open up and clean the fan now.
(Well, even if the warranty not over yet, I’ll open it anyway. Because Acer after sale service SUCKS!)

This time, it’s not as easy as my last laptop.
My last lappy was Aspire 5633 WLMi. That one was easy, they have a dedicated panel for fan cleaning.
Just open up the panel, and you can reach the fan directly.

This stupid Aspire 4937g…

Just a reminder, the procedure is almost the same as this video.
Damn stupid. Lousy design.

They must have done it this way to force consumer to pay Acer for maintenance.

OK, this is what I did.

Remove the battery.
Unscrew and pry open the 3 panels under, which is the panel for RAM, hard disc, and wireless card.
Remove the hard disc, RAM, and wireless card. Pry and slot out the DVD drive.
Remove the left and right side of the LCD panel.
Flip it over, pry open the speaker panel, and remove the keyboard.
More screws…
Carefully unplug the keyboard, speaker, LCD, shortcut panel.
Carefully remove them.
Ouch, my casing got a crack because I put too much force on prying the speaker case. >”< More screws... Pull out the wire attached to the wireless card at the bottom, from the top. Time for the mobo... Unplug bluetooth and card reader. Unscrew mobo. And... there is one cable I can't take out, it's tied to some unknown parts. And... The VGA is stucked... so hard to take out the mobo. Carefully take out the mobo, spin it around while the cable attached. Finally, I can see the fan. Unscrew fan from mobo, remove dusts from heatsink vent. Unscrew fan, and clean the inside. Finally... time for the hard part, assembling them back. Carefully spin the mobo and stuck it back, start from the VGA. Screw. Plug back the bluetooth and card reader. Put the wireless card's cable back in, and screw the top part. Plug the shortcut keys, speaker, LCD back in. And screw... Plug keyboard back, and slot in back. Flip around, put harddisc and RAM and wireless card back in. Put in battery, test... Ah shit! Can't boot! Something might've gone wrong. Dissemble again, make sure everything is plugged back in correctly... >“< And try again... Phew~ Windows login screen. OK, should be alright now. Turn off, screw everything back in. And viola~ Mission accomplished! ^^ I guess, when I have the time, I will post out the tutorial to clean this model. I can't find any guides or tutorials on dissembling this model on the web. :-S

The final step, cleaning the fan.