R32 problems - Heat, bad connections, battery

[cheifchimp]

I bought a used R32 (2658 BMM) about 6 months ago and have been experiencing a few annoyances with it but am generally happy:

• 1. When I first bought it the battery was completely dead but the seller replaced it without question. now the battery will hold full charge for 2 days but after that it loses charge until by the 8th day it lacks enough charge to boot.
  
  2. The USB ports were so loose the plug would dislodge enough to lose connection. I tweaked the metal frames and they are firmer now, fingers crossed.
  
  3. The original 40GB hard drive developed a bad patch so I bought a 160GB WD. went in no problem.
  
  4. The original dvd-rom was giving errors in Debian and completely disappearing in win2k so I just got a new DVD-RW (FRU 27L4358 off Ebay. The day after the 30 day warranty expired it started intermittantly experiencing the same errors as the rom. I suspect there may be an issue with the IDE connector.
  
  5. After 4 -5 hours running it becomes very unstable and the area around the CPU get very hot. I found a few references to heat problems in the forum so I'll try cleaning / repasting the heatsink and chech the fan when I find my tube of paste or get another one, I'm about to move so most of my stuff is already packed.

mik

[cheifchimp]

• 1. When I first bought it the battery was completely dead but the seller replaced it without question. now the battery will hold full charge for 2 days but after that it loses charge until by the 8th day it lacks enough charge to boot.

This seems to have stopped since I forgot to disconnect/turn off the AC adaptor for 3 days.

2. The USB ports were so loose the plug would dislodge enough to lose connection. I tweaked the metal frames and they are firmer now, fingers crossed.

So far so good, no sudden loss of USB devices.

3. The original 40GB hard drive developed a bad patch so I bought a 160GB WD. went in no problem.

4. The original dvd-rom was giving errors in Debian and completely disappearing in win2k so I just got a new DVD-RW (FRU 27L4358 off Ebay. The day after the 30 day warranty expired it started intermittantly experiencing the same errors as the rom. I suspect there may be an issue with the IDE connector.

I tried to reinstall w2k after messing up wifi drivers and between dvd drive refusing to boot and w2k BSODing cause it couldn't see the hdd I became desparate and flashed the BIOS and the dvd & hdd problems disappeared.

5. After 4 -5 hours running it becomes very unstable and the area around the CPU get very hot. I found a few references to heat problems in the forum so I'll try cleaning / repasting the heatsink and chech the fan when I find my tube of paste or get another one, I'm about to move so most of my stuff is already packed.[/list]

Got some Arctic Silver paste and cleaned the heatsink which was about 90% blocked. The cpu showed no sign of ever being in contact with the heat transfer pad. Its running a little bit cooler and ran for 9 hours yesterday without locking up but I can't detect any airflow through the inlet/outlet vents so I suspect the fan no longer works.