The fan pulls air from the slots in the case bottom and pushes it through the heat sink, then out the vents in the side. That was a year's worth of fuzzy buildup. I found a disassembly guide here for Toshiba, but they're all similar.
Question about cleaning the vents. Isn’t the method you suggest simply blowing the dust deeper into the laptop?
I know I need to clean my vents but really don’t know my options besides for a can of air.
True to some extent. You can always take off some of the screws to take off the plastic bottom cover and do a fuller cleaning. Doing burst blasts on the CPU, at least, will unclog that dust that raises the temp on the CPU, which degrades not only your windows experience, but the life of the cpu.
The fan pulls air from the slots in the case bottom and pushes it through the heat sink, then out the vents in the side. That was a year's worth of fuzzy buildup. I found a disassembly guide here for Toshiba, but they're all similar.
I have a garage refrigerator. Every once in a while I’ll pull out both cars, push the fridge out in the center and drop the back cover and take my yard blower to it full bore, 130 MPH....it still purrs like a kitten and keeps stuff cold, cold, cold.