Burst of Air

This is a bit off topic....but might be vaguely useful to someone if they manage to find it.

I recently bought Chessmaster 10th Edition.   So I install it onto my Compaq nw8240.  Its a reasonably beasty computer and should handle this fine.   I go into some of the tutorial stuff, all seems fine.  Then I starting playing in Training mode and something very curious happens.  The game starts slowing down.  Then freezes.  Then I have to shut the computer down with a power off.  The computer seems to be running really hot.  So I try it again, same deal. 

I leave it a few days and just do the "Academy" training stuff and the puzzles and things.  But actually playing a game of chess seems to cause it to die.   I figure for $25 it still is a pretty good deal, but I really would like to play chess!   I have a copy of Pawn2 which is ok, but fairly limited.    

So I ponder whether my computer getting really hot because the game is using a lot of CPU and the whole thing falling over is perhaps due to the inside getting too dusty.

So I hunt down some "Air Burst"   (which I couldn't get at Dick Smiths, out of stock in two stores, but a Mitre 10 had truck loads of the stuff).   I  spray it into various vent on the computer, a bunch of dust comes out,

*spray* *spray* *spray*  This is quite fun!

Get some tweezers and extract a few dust balls that just can't quite make it out the vents.  Then I turn my computer on....run up chessmaster, and Ta Da! I can play chess.   It runs really well.  Great game!

Most surprised that actually made a difference!

I'm also noticing the fan doesn't turn on nearly as much when I'm using it now either...    So something to keep in the back of your mind if your laptop seems to be running slightly hotter than usual!