Wednesday, December 30, 2009

I unscrewed and clean-up my SONY Vaio FZ

My second personal laptop, a SONY Vaio VGN-FZ25M, which I do acquire almost two years ago, have gone so very hot. It seems that the fan is not working effectively anymore, so I thought maybe its time to clean it up especialy that I am situated in a desert where dusty sands-storm often arise. My laptop is still covered within the 3-year service waranty, but waiting in line in a service center is often dissapointing.
After unscrewing the back lid of my FZ, I tried to snap the lid-up up but It seems so hard, it took me sometime but still I was not able to snap it out. I took refuge to the internet and found the following helpful site:Vaio FZ unscrewed. The site above was good, but after I was able to unscrew my laptop myself, I noted that the instructions are not 100% accurate especially on the trickiest part. Well, instead of unscrewing 3 screws from each screen hinges, you just need to unscrew 2 and leave that screw in the middle. I guess this is a control feature of Sony to prevent their technicians from accidentally pulling apart the wirings between the the screen and the main board.
Below is my simple run through on the steps that I have made, but I highly recommend that you read the link above.

  1. Prepare a clean and spacious working area.

  2. Turn the laptop upside down.

  3. Unscew all screws at the back lid. (tip: you can see at the back lid arrows pointing to the screws). Be sure to unscrew the memory compartment and the screw inside it. Also unscrew the hard-disk compartment and all the screws inside

  4. Slide the harddisk to pull it up. (tip: The memory chips need not be removed)

  5. Remove the optical media drive. This should be easy if you already unscewed all the screws.

  6. Turn the laptop back to its feet.

  7. Open the screen as far as it you can.

  8. Snap-out the speaker covers. It should be easy with the help of card (any card like: credit card, id, medical card, etc..)

  9. By now, you could see the 3 screws at the screen hinges. Unscrew the two screws and leave the one at the middle. Do this again on the other screen hinge

  10. Turn the laptop again upside down and put it into a pillow.

  11. Now, you could easily snap-out the back covers. After this you could already see the internal wonders of a sony vaio.

  12. Unscrew the fan covers. It is inside the fan that the majority of dust accumulates. Be sure not to snap-out the wirings.

  13. Clean it up. A paint brush or maybe a toothbrush will help. A small vacuum would also be great.


This was indeed a great experience and after this, my laptop is in top shape again.
Mabuhay!