Tag: laptop

3 Monitor Goal = 4 Monitor Result

So I brought an extra monitor from home with the intention of connecting it with my desktop which is already dual screen.

I ended up having problems with my extra video card, so I decided to just connect the third monitor to my laptop and extend the work space. After doing that I was able to connect both computers using Synergy so that I can use my desktop mouse and keyboard across both computers as if all of the monitors were connected to one machine.

Here is a quick picture to give you an idea (I’m running out of space on my desk, haha).

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One cool thing about using two machines like this is that you can be very productive on both and use a great deal of CPU power from one machine and it doesn’t slow down the entire system since the other computer and screens are independent!

Looks like I’ll be running my laptop full-time until I finally get around to purchasing another GeForce 7300 LE to match the video card that already in there. I hope this works.. 😉

Cleaning my laptop..

I love Dropbox. 😀 I’ve been cleaning my laptop and trying to organize all of my files, but moving them first to my desktop (~2TB’s of storage 😛 ).

Dropbox has been great so far since it works on Windows, Macintosh and Linux. I’m only using it for Windows and Ubuntu at the moment, but it works the same for both and it’s very efficient with a fast connection.

My goal is to clean my hard drive on my laptop back down to the bare bones size (just the Windows and Program Files folders taking up space).

I’ve let my hard drive pile up far too long, so I’m going to clean it and uninstall software I’m not using anymore. I have a bad habit of holding on to things and software that you never use anymore is just wasteful.

All of this just to get better boot up times and general performance improvements in Windows XP on my laptop, haha.

After running Registry Mechanic on my computer earlier it found over 1,500 problems, so I fixed them and optimized the registry and I can already tell some improvement. 😉

I’m hoping that disk cleanup and defragmenting after all of my files are transferred will give a noticeable boost.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

HP dv4000 Maintenance

Well, my HP dv4000 is closing in on being four years old now (by the way, that’s not actually mine in the picture…that’s just the same model. I have taken the stickers off of mine already, haha). It’s been a great laptop and it seems like it is still going to be holding strong for a while longer, but one thing about it is really irritating me.

The cpu fan is so loud sometimes. For some reason it will start making a really loud noise when it spins while other times it’s perfectly quiet and normal.

It kind of sounds like something may be rubbing, so I’m thinking that I will open it up soon and inspect. This is definitely not the first computer that I will have disassembled.

I did a little research and came across a good pdf that HP actually offered on their own web site, but just to be sure that I have it in the future I’m going to host it here as well.

The pdf is a Maintenance and Service Guide for an HP dv4000 notebook pc and a Compaq Presario v4000 notebook pc. It has some very helpful diagrams to show you the order of disassembling the notebook and also how many screws to remove for each part and each step.

If you have the same laptop as me and you’re needing to do some repairs then first of all make sure you feel comfortable with taking it apart yourself and secondly make sure you get a copy of this pdf and follow it closely!

I’ll do a write-up when I actually go through the cleaning process with mine. I actually need to see if the fan is just dusty and dirty or if it’s going bad and needs to be replaced, but I will take pictures and post a write-up regardless.

If anyone else has ever taken apart a laptop to fix a small annoying issue like this then please tell me how it went and if it was worth it in the end! Wish me luck! 😀