Boyfriend No Longer Leaves the Room When MacBook Is Running - Mixed Blessing

My Problem

My 2006 MacBook is still running strong and I'm planning on making our ten-year anniversary together, but in the last several years the fan has gradually become noisier. It ran as soon as I opened the laptop, and after downloading iStat Menus I found the fan wasn't even running high rpms, just noisy at normal (1000-2000) rpms. It also wasn't really doing its job, since my computer was more frequently becoming so overheated it demanded I shut it down for self-preservation. Techier friends who bought MacBooks at the same time reported similar problems and said it wasn't worth fixing, so they bought new computers and I just tolerated the roaring. People pay for white noise, right?

My Fix

The iFixit guide was wonderful. Two of the screws gave me trouble because I first tried to improvise a #00 screwdriver (don't do that). I also improvised a spludger with a wooden shish kebab skewer, which worked but probably wasn't ideal. Like other reviewers I found it impossible to remove the fan without ripping the black felt tape, and made do with some electrical tape that has worked fine so far. The silver tape also didn't really have any stickiness left, and I'm sure it would be better if I'd used new tape or glue, but I just put it back in position and it's worked fine.

End result: silence. Amazing. Take that, techy friends!

My Advice

If you have a noisy fan, as so many older MacBooks seem to, try this! My first plan was to take the fan out, take it apart, and try to clean it and oil the axle/shaft on the advice of an article on another website, but that advice is not applicable to this model (MacBook duo core A1181). The fan can't be taken apart without breaking it, and even once you've broken it you still don't really have an axle available to oil. Also, I was worried about sticking my fingers into the computer to insert the new fan (I heard pros use a static bracelet to prevent creating electric shorts), but it all seems to have worked fine. Inspired, I also bought a new battery ($12 off of Amazon, sorry iFixit, but it beat $99), and now my computer runs good as new.