Repairing my Sony VAIO

My Sony VAIO Laptop is 6 years old already and has been purely slow and pertains a poor performance for the past months. It's operation is slowly decreasing and I realized that it started to shutdown by itself, LCD screen back-light tends to flicker on and off (sometimes, nothing really shows up on the screen although it is turned on), and the system consist of a severe virus that can completely corrupt external flash drives/hard drives. I wanted to bring my laptop to Sony Center to have it fully fixed, but with all the system and hardware damage that the laptop has, I know it would be very costly for me. 

To avoid the expenses, I took the liberty on fixing the laptop by myself. I searched for tutorials on proper dismantling of a laptop, determining on how to troubleshoot a certain causes, changing the operating system, having additional RAM and various of research regarding about the specific problem depending on the degree of system and hardware damage of my laptop,

FAN REPLACEMENT

The first thing I checked was the fan of my laptop. I figured out that the laptop would prompt itself to shutdown whenever the microprocessor reaches a level of high temperature to avoid the microprocessor in burning itself out. I checked the placement of my fan underneath the laptop and the temperature was rising then suddenly it shuts off. So therefore I had to change the fan. I wasn't able to buy any fan for my Sony VAIO model since there is no fan available here in the my place and it would be expensive to order on the internet. I made a little changes. I took some fan out of a CPU and replaced it on my Sony. I literally took only the fan and dumped its casing since it does not fit on my laptop. Here are some images during the fan replacement:

The original fan inside my Sony VAIO Laptop

Cutting the wire of the fan since the configuration of the new fan I took had a different one

Removing the casing of the new fan since it wouldn't fit on the original case

Here is my new modified fan

LCD SCREEN FIX

The next one I had to fix was the LCD screen of my Laptop. It's back-light kept on flickering in various LCD positioning of my laptop. This was a nuisance problem I have been experiencing. Although, there are times that the screen would work properly only if it is stable, but if it is move a little, it would start to flicker then the back-light of the LCD would turn off. I had a hunch that a wire underneath the screen is loosen, so I had to open the LCD part as well. Here is an image when I was fixing the screen:

Tightening the cable to avoid the wires from loosening.

PLACING THERMAL PASTE ON THE MICROPROCESSOR

Since I had a modified fan, I also wanted to place a thermal past on the CPU core which is mainly the microprocessor to decrease the temperature level of heat dissipation. I bought a gold thermal paste at cdr-king. Here are some images below when I was placing a thermal paste on the microprocessor:

Opening the back case of my laptop

Removing the fan and its cooling plate

Gold Thermal Conductivity Compound

Removing old thermal paste and cleaning the microprocessor.
(Use a clean tissue with an isopropyl alcohol and avoid touching it with your fingers)

This is how it looks like when it is cleaned.

Place a small amount of thermal paste on the microprocessor.
(Be sure to place only on the microprocessor and avoid placing it on the circuit)

Final output when placing the thermal paste on the microprocessor.

CHANGING THE OPERATING SYSTEM TO WINDOWS 8

Due to the severe virus that the laptop has, I had to reformat its system. I wanted to try something a little different with the operating system since Windows 7 was its last loaded OS. So I changed it to Windows 8 for a different Operating System experience. I haven't been really a fan of Windows 8 operating system, but later I knew, its performance is really great with all the smooth transitions of the program operation and lightweight program consumption of the system itself. 

RAM UPGRADE

I also upgraded my RAM from 3GB to 4GB. Inside the laptop contains 2 slots for the RAM. In my laptop, the first slot has a memory of 2GB and the other one with 1GB. I found a 2GB RAM inside our house from a fully cracked LCD laptop. I took the 2GB RAM and replaced it with the 1GB RAM. Now, I have a total of 4GB of RAM for a much better performance.