A customer has a very old Medion laptop. He has some important data, which he needs recovered, as windows refuses to boot.

After some investigation, I find that even running BARTPE from CD, it only runs for a few minutes before either slowing to a crawl, or stopping completely.

I take a look at the cooling fan… Its a removable type, but nothing obvious blocking the vents… But I notice its running an old Athlon processor (I think around 1.2GHz).

It eventually becomes obvious that there is a severe temperature problem. I remember the old Athlons had some temperature issues (they always ran hot).

I try to reseat the cooling system, but it makes no difference.

So I take the laptop to the office, copy all the data to about 4 DVDs, and hand it all back to the customer (who is now going to buy a new laptop).