Disassemble a Toshiba Tecra A7 Notebook to clean the CPU fan

I own a Toshiba Tecra A7 notebook. I've got it on April 2008 and I was pretty satisfied by it.

Unfortunately, after I got back home last September I started having problems with the notebook. After some time with intense computation (video encoding, compiling software, etc..) with 100% CPU the system simply shut down.

So, I started investigating the problem. The reason, confirmed by the thermal sensors, was pretty obvious: overheating. Some times the CPU passed 100°C.

At the beginning I was pretty sure that there was some misconfiguration on Linux which would cause that. I asked for help on the Archlinux forums and understood that there were lot of people with same notebook and same problem. I was pretty sure it was a software misconfiguration. But it wasn't.

After some hard video editing sessions under Windows, I understood that, even under the Microsoft Operating System, the system was also shutting down after intense CPU tasks. The problem was hardware.

Other users suggested that the fan probably was full of dust so it wasn't able to dissipate the warm generated by the CPU.

I had to disassemble the notebook in order to check the fan and clean it in case it was full of dust. Well.. it turned out that it was really dirty. Almost half of the dissipater was full of dust, so unused.

Once cleaned the fan, the notebook started working cool again. Average temperature is now 50-60°C even under CPU stressing operations.

I decided to create this small disassembling and cleaning guide in order to help other people who might have the same problem.

DISCLAIMER: Please note that disassembling a notebook is a complex procedure. You should only start it if you have enough technical knowledge and the right tools. You can seriously damage your notebook.

If you doubt, don't do it. Let the professionals do that and bring your laptop to an assistance center.

Disassembling

Step 1: remove each screw from the bottom of the notebook

Step 2: Open the hard disk place and remove the hard disk.

Step 3: Open the ram place and remove them

Step 4: Remove the keyboard

This is done by inserting a tiny flat screwer just below the plastic covering above the speakers. Be careful because the covering is pretty thin so it can be easily damaged.

Then you will find 2 screws blocking the keyboard. Screw them out, unplug the keyboard and remove it keybord.

Next thing to do is unplug the monitor cable, which you will find below the left speaker. Then unplug any other cable plugging the lower part of the hull with the top.

Now you are on the hard part: disassembling the hull.

You already removed all the bottom screws so you should be able to split the top part from the bottom. I did that inserting a thin flat screwdriver between the two parts trying to unhook them. Be careful. Don't do too much force. If it is not unhooking you probably forgot to unscrew a screw somewhere.

Once you have separated the two parts of the hull there might still be some cable connecting the two. Unplug them.

Step 5: remove the fan shield

You can do this by unscrew the screws near the red dot in the picture.

Step 6: clean the fan

You can see in the picture above how dirty was my dissipater.

Step 6: lot of dust there!

Here you are. The process is complete. Now you should just reassemble your notebook using the inverse procedure.

If you have problem during the process please add a comment below and I will try to help you.

Good luck!