The problem? When I turned on my newly bought second hand computer it stunk up the room enough to make me barf. Worse than spyware or a virus i tell ya! With three smokers living in a small house i bet this computer was their only air filter.
What I had to do: Field stripped the whole damn computer in the garage. Even the fans cables got pulled and wiped. Absolutely down to all possible single items. Sprayed everything but motherboard, harddrive and laser devices with windex and wiped clean. The motherboard got a really soft brushing with canned hair because you know what happens to cell phones when you get them wet. The hard drives and laser devices (CD,DVD) got wiped with windex damp paper towel.
It took hours. Around 3 to 4 hours to do a really clean job of it.
Things that didnt work:
Pack newspapered in it like you do tupperware to get the food smell out. Reduced smell only 50%
Masked the smell with freshener or whatever. Instead of ridding the smell it instead of smelling like a smoker it smelt like a dirty old man. (yes Kel and oy i was thinking of you). Increased stink 50%
Baking soda? didnt even try it. Somehow the powder and computer didnt look like it should mix.
Some other expensive ideas were to costly.
End result: turn it on and i now smell absolutely nothing.
Cost: half a bottle of windex, 1/2 roll of paper towel, 4 hours of elbow greese and assembly. and one beautiful woman gone fishing.
99% of smell gone and 1% can be detected with case open and my nose stuck to the back of the case.
