How to Fix a Laptop that Smells like Cigarettes

If you've ever bought anything from a smoker, you know exactly how hard that smell is to lose.

I recently bought an older ThinkPad on Craigslist with this problem. Every time the fan kicked on, my living room was filled with the smell of stale cigarettes.

The fix took some effort, but it did work.
I first disassembled the whole case and removed the fan. I found some very good instructions for my particular model that helped me accomplish this without doing permanent damage.
If you've worked on computer hardware at all, you're probably familiar with the grey scum that accumulates on fans and vents. Well this one was full of a black scum (ash? nicotine?). I wiped it as clean as I could with wet Q-Tips. After all the scum was gone I sprayed the whole thing, including the nearby foam inserts with pine scented air freshener.
After reassembly, it now smells like air freshener, a big improvement over cigarettes. It did seem to make the fan noisier, though, so I would recommend adding a shot of oil to the fan bearing while its apart. I didn't want to open mine up again, so I just shot a spritz of WD40 through the vent. WD40 is generally not a very good lubricant, but it did quiet it down (for now, at least).

References:
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/IBM+ThinkPad+T42+Teardown/2952

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