Really need some help here, My machine is pretty loud so i decided to unplug two fans, the one on the top of the case and one on the side. And decided to clean out my cpu fan and heatsink cuz it had a lot of dust but i didnt have any compressed air. Just poped it off and cleaned it with a q-tip. When i went back to put the cpu fan and heatsink back on my computer stoped booting. It just gets stuck at the startup screen ( HP ) that it. Wondering what happend? did i fry the cpu of motherboard when i touched it? Thanks for the help --- oh and i did somthing stupid, cuz it was late and i was sleepy, i unpluged the fans while the machine was on, but i didnt remove the heatsink until the machine was off. Im guessing that fuked it up??
It either sounds like you've damaged your CPU via static or that you've damaged it whilst "cleaning" with a q-tip. Remember, you can't JUST use a q-tip by it's self.. it has to be dampened in appropriate liquid, such as pure alcohol, white spirit or proper CPU cleaner - if you rub the dry q-tip against the CPU you'll damage it.
Yea sounds like its bee damaged by ESD. Just on tis own, the q-tip will build up a couple hundred of volts at least.
How many fans do you still have, don't want to overheat things there, (though you'd hear a lot of beeping if you were). You didn't see or hear any discharge did you? If you really fried your cpu I'd doubt it would boot up even a little. I'm assuming you already did this but double check to make sure everythings plugged in properly, no bent pins or unconnected wires around.
