Vacuuming Tool?

Adding RAM(*), I discovered dust down in the fins of the CPU heat exchanger.

Fan blades too closely spaced to get a standard vacuum tool to reach the fins.

So I improvised, using a soda straw held into the opening of my Dust Devil hand-held.

Worked, but somewhat a PITA.

Anyone know of tools made for the purpose?

(*) Found the cause of my peculiar crashes... when you run out of RAM XP doesn't respond gracefully.

With Windows Explorer, Eudora, Agent, and The Calendar Planner open I'm now using 555MB out of 982MB available... No wonder I'd get a crash when I had only 512MB and then tried to open Excel as well ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

I wonder if anyone has put an open case computer in a dish washer? No soap of course. :)

Isn't dust like this typical blown out with some compressed gas? I think one product is called Super Duster. D from BC

I prefer to suck the dust out of there, rather than risking pushing it deeper into the fins. (This particular box has a duct from the side of the case, where air is sucked in and *pushed* thru the fins.)

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

A paint brush........ !

That's a pain.

I think I'll construct an adapter to fit an ABS irrigation feeder tube to the vacuum, so I can reach down in narrow areas.

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

something wrong with your swap file then. did you by any chance turn it off? or are you short on Disk space?

--
"I\'m never wrong, once i thought i was, but was mistaken"
Real Programmers Do things like this.
http://webpages.charter.net/jamie_5

Hardware stores around here sell different sizes of Brass tubing that you can solder. i would be concerned about using plastic tubing while sucking air and Dust through it. i've see it create static charges and if you happen to slip and touch a component on the board. well., you know the rest of the story. of course there is also static free plastics.

--
"I\'m never wrong, once i thought i was, but was mistaken"
Real Programmers Do things like this.
http://webpages.charter.net/jamie_5

Not that I know of. Looks like I've left everything there as default.

Nope. Using 21GB out of 80GB available.

I never had such peculiarities until I moved "up" to WinXp Pro from Win2K. I'm sorry I ever did that.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

True. My local Ace Hardware has a large display of "craft" brass tubing of all sizes.

Which would suggest using a flexible rubber tube down to a tapered brass nozzle. That'd work.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

XP with windows explorer, Outlook, Google, LTspice, MPlab. Total commited = 230MB. (I think I've 250Mb fitted ). Only memory probs come when the obnoxious window "helper" thing decides to load itself. john

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Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Hmm, well this box i'm currently on is a W2k and it's been nothing but smooth sailing here.

--
"I\'m never wrong, once i thought i was, but was mistaken"
Real Programmers Do things like this.
http://webpages.charter.net/jamie_5

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

I think WinXP is still susceptible to cumulative memory leaks. It seems like it gets bogged down (and even refuses to do some things) after it's been running for several days. Then when I try to shut it down, it hangs until I tap the power button, then it sometimes hangs again until I do the

5 second power-off reset. Then it's usually good to go for a while again. Well behaved programs probably don't cause memory leaks, but I do programming, which sometimes results in access errors and memory leaks when debugging. It's a lot more stable than WinMe, however!

Paul

[snip]

Same experience here. I never shut down until it hangs. Then I often have to resort to the reset button approach to kill it.

Yep.

But less stable than Win2K in my experience.

The PSpice machine with Win2K Pro, AMD CPU, NEVER hangs or crashes. Only reboots needed are for program installs.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

I think the box was better in the off state than trying to use ME! :)

--
"I\'m never wrong, once i thought i was, but was mistaken"
Real Programmers Do things like this.
http://webpages.charter.net/jamie_5

Jim, did you try canned air? I immobilize the fan then blow the dust out.

On an old Vaio laptop, the pads between the GPU and the CPU to the fan duct had both dried out. The result was excessive heating and system shutdowns. A shot of thermal grease, appropriately placed, solved the problem.

My new Alienware PC has a reset button! And a bios option, set by default, that makes the power button work instantly. PLUS it has a real AC-line power switch on the back.

DIE, Windows, DIE!

And it does look like XP should be rebooted often, daily or so, to reset accumulated damage. At least it comes up pretty quick, 30 seconds or so. 2K took minutes.

Have I mentioned lately that all things Microsoft are crap?

John

The WAF of that method is usually not high enough because when you blow the dust out it sails off onto other objects around you.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

I'm going to Ace and buy several brass tubes, sweat them into a tapered nozzle with a small-diameter flexible rubber hose to the vacuum... in fact that suggests that automotive vacuum hose might be perfect because it won't collapse.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Yeah, it's called an air compressor. Take the silly thing outside, and blow the dirt out. I do it to my computers every few years.

-Chuck