GAK! Vostro 1400 cooling fan
 

It turns out that you have to disassemble the
entire laptop to get at the cooling fan.

Step 25 remove cooling fan.

The odds of the machine working after that are
zero.
--


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

GAK! Vostro 1400 cooling fan
 

Ron Hardin wrote:

It turns out that you have to disassemble the
entire laptop to get at the cooling fan.

Step 25 remove cooling fan.

The odds of the machine working after that are
zero.
--


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

What happens if I just swap the HD into another Vostro 1400?

Will the new 1400 act as if it's the old one? Or is some BIOS
setting going to screw up that plan.
--


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

GAK! Vostro 1400 cooling fan
 

On Tuesday, June 27, 2017 at 4:01:29 PM UTC-5, Ron Hardin wrote:
Ron Hardin wrote:

It turns out that you have to disassemble the
entire laptop to get at the cooling fan.

Step 25 remove cooling fan.

The odds of the machine working after that are
zero.
--


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

What happens if I just swap the HD into another Vostro 1400?

Will the new 1400 act as if it's the old one? Or is some BIOS
setting going to screw up that plan.
--


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

That idea might even work with a "related" model. But, you're right...it's always a crap shoot!

GAK! Vostro 1400 cooling fan
 

Ron,

Three comments.

1. Dell has gone to the dark side with the maintainability of its laptops. Downright horrific. Near complete disassembly to replace a hard drive is another one of my Dell peeves. Honestly, maintenance and repair of most modern Dell laptops really sucks.

2. If you swap the hard drive from the Vostro 1400 into another one, you may well need to reactivate any software that requires activation. If the Vostro 1400s have the same version of Windows sticker, that would be no problem unless you upgraded to Windows 7 or later. If the OS has a generic Dell Windows product key, activation may not even be necessary. And, of course, products like PhotoShop, Acrobat Pro etc would probably also need reactivation.

3, The Vostro 1400 uses an Intel 965 chipset, so the OS would boot and run on any system with the same chipset, e.g. Latitude D830, Latitude D630 and others. And, of course, there would still be the problem of activating Windows and other software... Ben Myers


On Tuesday, June 27, 2017 at 4:39:11 PM UTC-4, Ron Hardin wrote:
It turns out that you have to disassemble the
entire laptop to get at the cooling fan.

Step 25 remove cooling fan.

The odds of the machine working after that are
zero.
--


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

GAK! Vostro 1400 cooling fan
 

Ben Myers wrote:

Ron,

Three comments.

1. Dell has gone to the dark side with the maintainability of its laptops. Downright horrific. Near complete disassembly to replace a hard drive is
another on

2. If you swap the hard drive from the Vostro 1400 into another one, you may well need to reactivate any software that requires activation. If the
Vostro 1400s

3, The Vostro 1400 uses an Intel 965 chipset, so the OS would boot and run on any system with the same chipset, e.g. Latitude D830, Latitude D630 and
others.

On Tuesday, June 27, 2017 at 4:39:11 PM UTC-4, Ron Hardin wrote:
It turns out that you have to disassemble the
entire laptop to get at the cooling fan.

Step 25 remove cooling fan.

The odds of the machine working after that are
zero.
--


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

I can see different chipset or devices would be a problem, but isn't all
that other stuff on the HD? In which case it ought to move with the HD.

Registry and all.

The V1400 still works just at a very low CPU speed, which it throttles to on
temperature. I have one CPU core turned off to help.
--


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

GAK! Vostro 1400 cooling fan
 

They are both XP systems, both came with XP Home
and the failed one is now XP Pro; but both have
replacement HDs by now, those having failed long
ago.
--


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

GAK! Vostro 1400 cooling fan
 

Yeah, you have to tear down a vostro 1520b to get
at the coin cell, which is how I know the odds of
getting a torn-down machine to work again are
zero. Also you have screws left over.
--


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

GAK! Vostro 1400 cooling fan
 

Ron Hardin wrote:

It turns out that you have to disassemble the
entire laptop to get at the cooling fan.

Step 25 remove cooling fan.

The odds of the machine working after that are
zero.

I backed up the HD just in case, and the HD swap
seems to have worked. The alternate machine came
up thinking it's the old machine, except for one
found new hardware (something about a network
controller) which it didn't find on the driver
disc from Dell anyway. But the machine seems to
work.

Albeit a bit slower because it's a 1.4GHz
processor instead of a 1.8GHz processor.
--


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.