My laptop is cool again!

My Dell Inspiron 5100 heatsink saga is over--for the moment. Thanks to Dan's post I was able to take my laptop apart to find that the heatsink grease had baked into a hard, white-out like substance, effectively gluing my heatsink and CPU together. Not good. (It's no longer under warranty so I didn't void anything by opening it up.)

After prying the two apart, gently so as not to scratch either, I cleaned them both with alcohol and Q-tips before applying a new, even layer of grease on both. Now my laptop is down from 60-70C (CPU temp) to 40-50C and from 50-55C (Hard drive temp) to 35-40C. (How do I know? Because I run I8kfanGUI.)

And to think it only cost $20: the grease, Q-tips, alcohol, and canned air. Any computer repair place would have been much more expensive.