I thought I might share my experience here rather than asking a question because it might save someone the embarrassment and time-waste if or when they get a similar problem.
FAN WHEEZING.
Last November I noticed my Acer Aspire PC tower was getting noisier. In the past, fan noise has been small motherboard- fans getting worn, but on this occasion it was sounding very asthmatic wheezy from the fan that sucks air into the system to cool and ventillate.
The tower is on the floor on the carpet under my desk. We do have a pet dog, but we also vacuum the carpets regularly.
The fan noise started to get busy when I was doing more memory-intensive jobs. But I still didn't take any notice or suspect that the machine couldn't breathe properly. Then a week ago it was making these noises most of the time it was switched on (14 hours a day). Then I started doing a very memory intensive job burning a DVD and converting a format from vob to .avi and 80% through the job the PC switched off without any warning - instant shut down as if I'd pushed and held the ON/OFF button. No warning messages, no blue screen of death.
CRASHED AGAIN
I rebooted and it started a scan of the D partition drive (Windows XP Home)so I let it do that, and when I attempted a repeat of the same operation it crashed again. I wondered if it was shutting down to protect the system from overheating. Why didn't I think of that before?
So I thought - GIVE IT A CLEAN !
I hadn't cleaned the tower for over a year and I looked down at the side of the case and the circular air inlet (12 cm diameter) made of about 60 holes was completely blocked with the type of dust you normally see inside a vacuum cleaner waste bag!
Outside it went, and I took the case cover off and to my horror saw the plastic trumpet "venturi" (that brings the cooling air into the processor area via a large fan) was all furred up with fluff - pale brown clean fluff (we live in a low pollution area by the coast) and the blades of the fan were covered in it. Also the motherboard and various plug-in cards had a carpet of fluff covering them like the cobwebs in old haunted houses in the movies!
Luckily I have a hand-operated blower like bellows for fanning a fire, but in this case I have what is called a "Piano Tuner's Huff" designed to clean dust out of old piano-actions and I huffed the living daylights out of all areas including sockets on the back, and connections and circuit boards inside. I wiped and polished the plastic venturi, and the outside case panels were cleaned inside and out.
Put it all back together and suddenly it was "all quiet on the processor front". No more wheezing when it starts doing graphic-intensive jobs or DVD burning. And more importantly, it no longer crashes when I do those high-memory jobs.
I guess I'm lucky that the main processor didn't burn out and it's a tribute to the Acer marque that it can have such a tolerance of abuse, albeit un-intentional by me. Thank goodness the dust was dry, or there might have been short-circuits all over the place.
I have also changed the desktop regime to the old Windows "look" instead of the more graphic intensive Window XP with all its fade in menus and drop shadows which though fun, do eat up a lot of memory. The desktop is actually easier to use with this setting than the XP over-pretty display.
I hope this wasn't too long or boring but it may help people to know that it's worth checking the tower for accumulated gunge in case performance is handicapped by a layer of Pet dander and all the normal airborne household dust associated with domestic life!
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