Some problems aren’t nearly as complicated as the person panicking about them.

So, what would you do if a friend insisted their laptop was melting down, but after a little investigation, you find that the poor thing had been cooking under a blanket the whole time?

Would you laugh at the mistake? Or would you immediately jump to action and bring the computer back to life?

In the following story,  one friend finds himself in this predicament and helps his friend fix her laptop.

Here’s what happened.

POV: Laptops can’t breathe under blankets

So, a friend of mine messaged me a few days ago, panicking that their laptop was “trying to cook itself alive.”

They said even running a few browser tabs and Spotify made the fan sound like it was preparing for takeoff. The keyboard had gotten so warm it felt like typing on a heating pad.

Naturally, I put on my IT support hat and asked the standard first question: “Did you try restarting it?” Because, of course, that’s the sacred tech support ritual.

Then he found the problem.

After a few restarts (and some dramatic sighing on their end), I decided to take a deeper look. Turns out, the poor thing wasn’t dying—it was suffocating. My friend had been using it exclusively on the bed, blocking the vents as if trying to smother the CPU in its sleep.

So, we got to work: cleaned out the vents with compressed air, and set it up on a desk. Applied new thermal paste (thank you, YouTube University) and then added a cooling pad for good measure.

A few minutes later … boom. The jet engine went silent, temperatures dropped, and peace was restored. Moral of the story 🙂 Laptops need air, too. Let them breathe, and they’ll love you back (or at least stop burning your fingertips)

Yikes! At least it was a simple fix.

Let’s check out how the people over at Reddit feel about this story.

It’s possible she was using an older model.

It brought back memories for this reader.

This would not have been good.

Well, that’s interesting.

Bet she won’t do that again! But if she does, there’s no helping her.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.