Comment by NoZebra120vClip

I lived in N. California in 1996, and I had an impressive 486DX66 tower machine. That summer, I would go to work during the day, and my girlfriend would use the computer as much as she liked. I'd use it at night and on weekends.

She began to complain that it was locking up. It happened to her over and over, but not to me, so I wasn't sure why.

One day I had occasion to remove the case and look inside. The CPU fan had become dislodged, and would spin uselessly without cooling down the fast 486.

I owed an apology to my girlfriend. Many years later, I was able to apply this elementary knowledge to help out my father, whose notebook always locked up. He put it on a cooling pad, which was enough to allow the vents to work, even without running those external fans.