Noisy fan on HP Compaq nx9005

I have an old laptop (an HP Compaq nx9005) that sits switched on and its fan has been overworking forever... it gets hot and I worry sometimes that it's going to pack in... it did once... I lost the hard drive to some HD clicking bug - perfectly good hard disk one day... the next it's toast... no reason except age. I have kept it just in case one day I can afford to send it off to someone who can replace the head and read my data off it... (it's a Fujitsu 2.5in MHT2060AT from Dec 2003)

Fan... I am sure I stripped my laptop some time ago.. I cleaned the dust from it... it made no difference... I also checked every service and program running in Windows and it's hardly got any excuse to have a full blast fan all the time.

So I stripped it again... opened it up and took out all the drives, wiped the mouse board, dusted around... removed the CPU fan... then discovered I could undo the fan box... 4 screws...

Inside I discovered a wad of fluff packed against the venting fins... a few mms thick... picked it out... brushed it all clean... and ...

Now the laptop sits there so silently I worry sometimes that it has switched itself off... there was perhaps something comforting about hearing it whirring away... Anyway, that's taken a little bit of pressure off the fan and minutely from the electricity bill...