[NTLUG:Discuss] At LAST - my Dell Latitude malfunction

[Stephen Davidson]

Greetings.

This is more of a heads up/fyi than anything else.  As some on this list
may (or may not) recall, I have been complaining about performance
issues with my Dell Latitude laptop ever since I had upgraded to SuSE
9.2.  Recently, I had upgraded to OpenSuSE 10.0, because it supposedly
addressed some of the issues I was apparently seeing.  That did not fix
the performance issue, and I had been seriously considering downgrading
to SuSE 8.2, the last one I was completely stable with.  Well, last
weekend, decided to install the i8k package (Dell HW control), and see
if that did anything.  It did, kind of.  It reported one fan not
working.  Latitude laptops have two fans, and it was saying the left one
was not coming on..  Visual verification, and yep, left fan (in rear of
case) definitely was not coming on, just the noisy right hand side one.

So, I took laptop apart, as much as I could.  Went digging.  Found
something wedged in left fan's blades.  Knocked it loose, although I am
not sure if I managed to remove it from the laptop.  Reassembled
laptop.  Left fan now started.  Tried running a few tasks.  Did not
bring laptop to its knees.  Tried some heavy duty stuff (mega project
build -- Linux kernel not the only big project out there<grin>).  Rather
than taking 70-90 minutes, took 17minutes.  And routine tasks were back
to their normal time.  I can again use Linux Laptop for work, rather
than a paper weight.  I am now happy camper with Linux again (and
apologizing for blaming Linux for what turned out to be Hardware based
fault).

Moral:  If system suddenly slows down after an OS Upgrade, not
necessarily upgrades fault.  Check your fans too!

FYI, same build, on a MS 64bit AMD 2.5Ghz machine, 15 minutes.  Linux
laptop. 2.2 Ghz 32bit Pentium4.

-Steve