I’m sure most of you already know that the issues I’ve been having with my laptop overheating has been a re­curring problem for the past five or so years.

After taking a suggestion from one of my buddies who live casts competitive Tetris with me once in a while, I tried to take apart my laptop to clean out the dust inside my laptop. He told me that the problem was most likely a bit of dust stuck inside near the fan that was preventing it from properly expelling hot air.

I whipped out my handy dandy mini screwdriver and started getting to work on removing the 20 or so screws holding the bottom half of the base of my laptop to the upper half of the base of my laptop. After getting through 19 of the 20 screws (numbers not exact, of course, but the point is that I had one screw left), I stuck the screwdriver in the hole containing the last screw. I applied a bit of pressure and started twisting, but it felt like the screwdriver was spinning freely inside.

I applied a bit more pressure, and realized that the screw was damaged up to a point that I wouldn’t be able to unscrew it. I thought to myself that it wouldn’t really matter, seeing as I had taken out about 95% of the screws, so I tried to split the base of my laptop anyway without removing the last screw.

It wouldn’t budge.

I stuck the opposite end of my screwdriver, which conveniently happens to be a flat-head chisel-like tip, into the crevice between the two parts of the base of the laptop. I fidgeted the screwdriver around quite a bit, but it felt like the two parts were being held together by superglue.

I had spent quite a bit of time unscrewing 19 screws, and I wasn’t able to successfully follow through with my plans because of a single broken screw. Then, I realized something.

What is the point of having 20 screws if, clearly, one screw is enough to hold the entire base of the laptop together without a hint of failure? Did Dell purposely design their laptops such that people like me would go through the struggle of unscrewing 19 screws, then get to the last one and explode in rage?

In frustration, I peeked into the fan area and tried to get the dust out without opening the laptop by just blowing as hard as I could into the opening.

Not exactly the best idea.

All of a sudden, tiny specks and particles (of dust, I’m assuming) fluttered out of the fan and into my mouth and up my nose. I had a sneezing fit for like 40 seconds straight, then realized that it had actually worked.

I put all 19 unnecessary screws back into my laptop. I had to drink about two glasses of milk to finally flush down all the random dust particles lodged inside my nasal passages and in my throat, but it seemed to work out. My laptop runs at a (relatively) cool 80 degrees Celsius or so when doing processor-intensive things, like when I play League of Legends. I haven’t tested out streaming yet, but I’m assuming the results will work in streaming as well.

So, the moral of the story is to not even try to unscrew all the screws on your laptop, because it will be an utter fail and a pathetic waste of your time. Instead, blow as hard as you can into the fan opening, and make sure you have plenty of milk to flush down all the foreign substances that you are about to inhale and swallow.

(Or just get a can of compressed air.)