Cleaning inside?

I have my three year old macbook open in on the table as I had to take the topcase/keyboard off to replace the airport card. The logicboard is incredibly dusty in here and I was wondering if I should do a little cleaning while it is open or if I am best to let it alone?

Thanks!

Boner_18 said:

I have my three year old macbook open in on the table as I had to take the topcase/keyboard off to replace the airport card. The logicboard is incredibly dusty in here and I was wondering if I should do a little cleaning while it is open or if I am best to let it alone?

Thanks!

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Are you sure we are talking about a MacBook...or is it a PowerBook or an iBook? It isn't really important...it's just unusual to hear about someone replacing an Airport card on a MacBook.

As far as cleaning...the best method would be to purchase a can of compressed air...and just blow off all of the dust & other debris.

- Nick

Yep, macbook. I had a "blinking" problem w/ wireless and ruled out everything but the airport card. As an added bonus I could upgrade from an 802.11g to an 802.11n. Thanks for the cleaning tip.

Boner_18 said:

Yep, macbook. I had a "blinking" problem w/ wireless and ruled out everything but the airport card. As an added bonus I could upgrade from an 802.11g to an 802.11n. Thanks for the cleaning tip.

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Did you figure out yet if replacing the airport card fixed the problem?

- Nick

I had this with a MacBook recently, and it was fixed by simply doing a Command+Option+P+R at startup.

But to answer your previous question, yes. Hold the fans so that they can't spin and use a can of compressed air to remove the dust.

Note that you do NOT want to spin the fans with the compressed air. Over-spinning them can damage the bearings.

So far so good from the airport card replace. Getting better connectivity (from the upgrade) and it has yet to exhibit "blinking" symptoms. I tried a PRAM corruption reset to no avail...

Boner_18 said:

So far so good from the airport card replace. Getting better connectivity (from the upgrade) and it has yet to exhibit "blinking" symptoms. I tried a PRAM corruption reset to no avail...

Click to expand...

As far as the upgrade from "g" to "n"...are you suggesting that you did some sort of hardware upgrade?

Because my understanding is that some of the earlier MacBook's shipped with "g" Airport...and that they could be upgraded to "n" via a firmware update.

Of course I realize that your old "g" airport sounds like it died...so upgrading to "n" via hardware I guess makes sense, since you had to disassemble anyway.

- Nick