Interesting.... but too complex for me to bother with atm. Templates are ridiculously useful sometimes but I tend to avoid them if I can because they can make for some complicated code
So. I earned $100 today by fixing a friend's laptop. It was overheating constantly and switching itself off, and she (my friend) couldn't login to her user (Windows said something about "user logon service not started). It was an HP Pavilion DV6 (the AMD edition), which meant it was horrifically difficult to pull apart (HP stands for Horrible Packaging in my mind) and I spent a whole morning trying to get it apart. I then decided it wasn't likely to be the cooling system itself, and because I couldn't get any further into the laptop I put it back together.
I started in Safe Mode and logged on, but Windows created a TEMP user because the normal logon had failed. Unfortunately the TEMP users are kinda crappy and most things don't work properly, so I couldn't run Malwarebytes (I thought it was probably a virus). In the end I got Spybot S&D to run, and it found nothing (a couple of cookies).
I then thought about it some more and realised it could actually still be the cooling system, but I was very tired at that point and went to bed. The next morning, I stripped it apart again and then watched a YT video of the disassembly of a similar model to work out how to get this model apart, and succeeded (duh - the keyboard comes off separately.... you know, like all laptops

). It took me ages of poking, prodding and lightly pulling on cables before it all finally came apart, and I could remove the cooling framework.
The fins didn't
appear at all clogged until I looked closer: there was a whole heap of dust packed tightly in behind one of the heat pipes, so I took it outside, started up the compressor and (not so) carefully blew a huge cloud of dust out. When I was confident it was clean, I took it back inside and looked at the thermal paste. Well, it wasn't thermal paste any more; it had complete had it. It was thin, dry and flaking off, so I got a bottle of acetone and some cotton buds and cleaned off the crappy remains of paste, and applied some good quality new stuff.
I put the whole thing back together (another half-hour at least), started it up, and.... the screen was working, but slightly fizzly with smeary colours and dots appearing randomly (like a poorly connected RF connector on a Mega Drive). I turned it off, went and had lunch, and then stripped the outer layers off enough to find the screen's ribbon cable. Turns out it wasn't a real ribbon cable, more a many-pinned plug directly attached to the motherboard. I'd bumped it loose, so I just unplugged and re-plugged it and the screen worked fine. Phew.
The laptop seemed to be running much cooler and with far less fan noise, so I then went about fixing the Windows logon. My theory was that the logon issue had been caused by a crash from the overheating. A bit of googling revealed that it was a simple registry fix (huzzah for M$ KB articles).
All fixed, and I got $100 for it! I wasn't expecting any money, I was just doing it because I like fixing computers, but my friend is very generous and insisted on paying me for the work

About 8 hours total, I spent on it (mostly because I'd never stripped a laptop to that level before). Very pleased with the result
We watched The Expendables 2 tonight. Bizarrely brilliant, it was. Thoroughly enjoyed the OTT action and video-game level of blood

It was fun spotting all the far-too-old action hero actors, haha

And OMGosh the fight scenes!
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EDIT: OH OH also!! Guess what! My new Corsair Vengeance 1500 7.1 Surround USB headset arrived today! Woot! It's super comfy and the sound quality is excellent. Tip: Install Corsair's headset software
before using them or you'll deafen yourself. Windows volume isn't fine enough granularity without the software installed
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EDIT2: Oh AND! I reached 4739 hours of uptime on my Nexus 7 before it finally crashed and bootlooped because I tried to play a severely corrupt video. That's
197.5 DAYS of constant running without restarting! Achieved mostly due to diligent plugging in to chargers (though I had a few 2% panic-moments). Suffice to say it was getting a bit slow by that point