Acer (non-) Support

Daughter's laptop has begun overheating due to suspected dustclogging the fan intake.

Grandson phoned Acer support, what a palaver that was!

Some misguided 'techie' informed him that the rubber plug on the lappy base, was covering a "magnetic lock" and that he would need a dedicated tool from Acer (at ££££'s) to remove it and disassemble the lappy.

Have since found an Acer Workshop Manual (please don't ask where) which shows it to be a shock protector, and the manual carries all the disassembly instructions.

And the price of calling Acer is horrendous.

It's an Acer Extensa 5300z, btw.

You'll get much better support here than any OEM.

What I do in such cases is google for a video showing how to disassemble enough to blow the dust out and not in. If heating persists it may require repasting the processor which I just did on an HP laptop and was a mess but also quite a learning experience. This also normally has a Youtube video for your model or close.

Googling your model only brings me to this thread, so I widened it to Extensa and got this:



and this for the processor if required:

Very good!
The OP has lucked out, as not all fans are that easy to get to.

Many thanks to Gregrocker, now I am going to strip my first lappy, with confidence!

Not to scare you, but to give you an idea how fragile they can be during dissasembly (and why cost is prohibitive at a shop):

On the Compaq I had to completely disassemble to get to the processor, the touchpad ribbon was clamped into place by a plastic clamp the size and heft of a fingernail clipping. So of course with the slightest tug it broke. To get the touchpad to work I had to reposition the broken clamp, place another piece of plastic on top of it, tape it securely with electrical tape, then the weight of the keyboard screwed back into place locked it into position.

So it requires great care, perfect lighting, magnification if possible and absolute slow motion.

Good luck and keep us posted.

Little tips for Bertison.

To be fully confident, try to provide yourself small note and simple mapping when you do a total disassembling, just in case you get distracted in the middle of process and forget your way back.

I do it most of the time since I got an experience my lovely cat jump over my table and scrambled all parts that I placed them orderly.

Kevin