[happyfeet]

Right, I have a Compaq Presario 2100 laptop which is about 4 years old now. It slowly started to die about a year or so ago and I got a new desktop, but I want to bring the laptop "back to life" as you could say so I can bring it into work etc.

The problems I've had with it are:

- Battery doesn't charge properly. I'm assuming the battery is duff and I just need a new one.
- Computer runs slowly at startup and in general (512mb RAM, but it goes pretty damn slow even for that memory).
- Random shutoffs, mostly when it tries to "do" something or many things at once. I think this is due to overheating for the most part.

I've recently cleaned it up a bit by deleting old software and putting in good antivirus, antispyware and firewall which has helped. But I would like to make it good again, so do we think this is possible?

If I bought a new battery and maybe upgraded it to 1gb RAM that could help, but it's the shutoffs and overheating that concerns me most. I've heard it may be due to dust in the fan, is this true? If so, how is the best way to go about fixing this?

Also, should I bite the bullet and re-format the whole thing? Would this help performance significantly?

I should say I'm no expert on computers (I've upgrade RAM before but that's about as complicated as it has got for me so far) so any advice would need to be dumbed down a bit!

Any help would be great.

[Cew27]

hmmm im not sure about the cooling issue but it is most likely that dust has gathered around the fans, as far as i know laptops are hard to crack open so i would seek further advice on that
also 1 gig of ram and re-installing the os would speed it up quite a bit
as for the battery you would need to seek out one online but it may also be the psu not charging it
hope i helped

[happyfeet]

Thanks for the reply cew.

Another question, how do I remove the casing from the back of the laptop and what do I need to watch out for so I don't break anything? I've tried looking for the service manual but cannot find it.

[Carbon]

Download it from the manufacturer website. There is no standard way to disassemble a laptop.