The red part is the fan, which probably just needs a good cleaning and some compressed air—unless it’s dying, then you might have to swap it out. The blue one is the little passive heatsink on the CPU; you should blow the dust out of that too since it'll choke if it gets clogged, and maybe reapply some thermal paste while you're at it.
If it's only about a year and a half old, I guess you might still be covered under warranty...
You might want to pop it open and see what's actually going on. Maybe you don't even need a new fan; it might just be spinning faster because the heatsink is choked with dust or the thermal paste has dried out and isn't doing its job.
It's an 11-year-old machine, so I guess the big question is how much the keyboard is actually trashed after that spill. Like, when is it gonna start acting up? And if that original Hard Disk Drive is still sitting in there, who knows what kind of shape it's in... If I were you, I probably wouldn't mess around with it.
Nicole Booth25 said:The Windows 10 PIN is one thing entirely! Your Microsoft Account password is a separate matter altogether. And then there’s your Outlook email address, which is yet another thing.
So, here's the situation: I attempted to log in using that second method. Specifically, the password for my Microsoft Account. The system tells me they’ll send a recovery code so I can set a new PIN. The code arrives via SMS without any issues. But when I actually enter it on the login screen, it refuses to work. Instead, it just throws an error saying "something went wrong." And just like that, I've been stuck in this endless loop for days.
All I see on my desktop is a handful of icons: Sleep, Restart, and the Wi-Fi icon. That's it. Nothing else. ....
I'd guess you might be trying to enter that recovery code in the wrong spot—maybe it’s meant for a website to reset your PIN/password rather than directly on the login screen?
Just guessing, though. I've never run into this myself since I always stick to local accounts instead of using a Microsoft account...
Just cut the old stuff off and solder it back on, or maybe just twist the wires together and wrap them in some electrical tape. Just watch out so you don't leave too much slack hanging around, otherwise it might get caught in the fan, I guess. That's pretty much it...
Or you could just desolder the connector from the power supply PCB entirely and solder it directly.
Man, I dealt with this kind of thing maybe ten years ago. Some nasty virus managed to wedge itself right into the MBR, so even after a full Windows reinstall, it would just pop back up a few hours later...
I mean, sure, you can use hers, but an external GPU is also an option.
It honestly looks like a GPU or memory issue to me. If you're running on integrated graphics, it's pulling from your RAM, so maybe try running MemTest first? You could also try downclocking the RAM or testing the sticks one at a time if you have two...
Yeah, the gap between those generations is pretty slim (each jump was barely noticeable anyway), plus that Core i7 has a higher base clock, so it basically levels out
You’ll need to check which laptop you're rocking to see if it even has an M.2 slot—if it's an older model, it probably doesn't, so you'd likely need a standard 2.5" SATA SSD instead.
Honestly, this is a pretty good excuse to finally switch to an SSD, since the speed boost is kind of massive.
Trying to run everything off an external drive isn't really a viable move. I mean, you technically could, but you probably won't want to. 😬
To save your files (assuming they aren't totally gone), you might try booting from a Linux live USB; if you can grab your data and dump it onto a thumb drive, then great. Or just plug the drive into another PC to see if it reads. If not, then things are going to get messy.