I decided on cleaning my laptop fans today, which I’ve been procrastinating for about a year now because of this one screw. But I just can’t seem to open this with my screwdriver, since whatever I did back when I last opened it it’s nearly circular now. Is there a way to unscrew this?

  • mlg@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    If its big enough, try the rubber band trick to get some grip.

    If its a tiny electronic screw, you’ll have to very carefully coax it out with either some needle nose pliers by gripping the outside, or by using a slightly larger screwdriver head and ensuring it doesn’t spin (very tricky, easy to strip screw further, using rubber band here might also help).

    If the case can handle it, you can use the larger head and give it some decent amount of pressure to make sure it doesn’t spin when you turn. Again be careful, because pushing too hard could break the case.

    You might have to inch it fractions of a turn at a time to make sure it doesn’t break, so it’ll take a while before it becomes loose enough to spin out by hand.