DIY Laptop Repair
Jul. 3rd, 2009 12:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidnJust as I've been getting better, it's now my work laptop that has become terminally ill - starting yesterday evening after I got back from taking Whitney to the airport, it would manage to get two minutes into Windows before freezing up completely, with no hard drive activity, PC speaker warning noises or response to any input (including being hit with a hammer). After some searching around, I found out that this symptom matched up to a known problem with the T40 range - basically, it's dying of a design fault that causes one or more vital components to become unsoldered from the main board after a couple of years, meaning that the whole thing can die with the slightest amount of movement if it finds the processor suddenly missing. On the advice of another forum I found, to test this diagnosis, I ran it with this crude fix yesterday morning:
And with weight placed on the spot below the keyboard, that allowed it to survive for hours rather than the couple of minutes that it had managed on every other attempt, though obviously it made it slightly difficult to use. During that time I took the opportunity to back up as many useful files as I could think of, and sent a message about its impending death to my boss, who - after a tricky Indiana Jones-like moment when I had to roll the water bottle off it and keep it clamped together while reading the serial number off the bottom - is organizing a replacement.
That'll take a while to arrive, though, and in the meantime I attempted a do-it-yourself solution suggested by the Internet, because as we all know my ability in this area is second only to my cooking.
Laptops are at least similar to desktops in how they're laid out logically, but they're a whole lot more awkward to get into because they have to be so compact. Fortunately, the Thinkpads have helpfully labelled screws on the base, so that you don't have to guess which ones to remove and have the screen fall off when you're trying to get the hard drive out or anything.
Once the screws have been removed, the disassembly guide says that you can easily slide the keyboard a little backwards with the press of a thumb below the power button. When I tried this, the machine woke up during surgery instead and I had to quickly kill it before it realized what was happening. In reality, you need the aid of a couple of wedges and a crowbar to get the keyboard off - you have to force it towards the back end at both edges so that a couple of clips clear the front of the case, then lever it upwards.
But with the keyboard eventually off, the internal components are exposed. (You can remove it entirely rather than prop it up as I've done here, but it's attached to the innards with a fiddly and fragile-looking plastic contact and I didn't want to risk breaking it any further). The bit we're after is the processor - what needs to be done here is to add some extra non-conductive padding to the top so that when they keyboard's back on it presses down on it and holds it in place.
The guide I was using took the approach of stuffing it full of Post-It notes, but for my padding I used a single piece of paper. The most suitable one I had to hand was one of the CVS pharmacy's typically colossal receipts - I got this one last weekend for buying a packet of Fruit Pastilles or something there.
And after folding the strip of paper into a concertina to form a spring, like Tony Hart used to show us, it needs to be balanced on the processor and the keyboard gently lowered into place on top of it using whatever implements you have to hand. (Getting the keyboard back on again is almost as awkward as removing it - it has to be in exactly the right place or the spacers attached to it will hit bits of the case, and then you have to haul it towards you with the palms of your hands until it slides back into place). Turn it over again, put the screws back if they still line up, and the Thinkpad should be miraculously brought back from the dead.
And with this unlikely and unorthodox solution in place, it seems to be running quite healthily, even if it does have an awkward bulge underneath the Space bar. I would at least hazard that it'll be as usable as usual until proper salvation arrives.
And with weight placed on the spot below the keyboard, that allowed it to survive for hours rather than the couple of minutes that it had managed on every other attempt, though obviously it made it slightly difficult to use. During that time I took the opportunity to back up as many useful files as I could think of, and sent a message about its impending death to my boss, who - after a tricky Indiana Jones-like moment when I had to roll the water bottle off it and keep it clamped together while reading the serial number off the bottom - is organizing a replacement.
That'll take a while to arrive, though, and in the meantime I attempted a do-it-yourself solution suggested by the Internet, because as we all know my ability in this area is second only to my cooking.
Laptops are at least similar to desktops in how they're laid out logically, but they're a whole lot more awkward to get into because they have to be so compact. Fortunately, the Thinkpads have helpfully labelled screws on the base, so that you don't have to guess which ones to remove and have the screen fall off when you're trying to get the hard drive out or anything.
Once the screws have been removed, the disassembly guide says that you can easily slide the keyboard a little backwards with the press of a thumb below the power button. When I tried this, the machine woke up during surgery instead and I had to quickly kill it before it realized what was happening. In reality, you need the aid of a couple of wedges and a crowbar to get the keyboard off - you have to force it towards the back end at both edges so that a couple of clips clear the front of the case, then lever it upwards.
But with the keyboard eventually off, the internal components are exposed. (You can remove it entirely rather than prop it up as I've done here, but it's attached to the innards with a fiddly and fragile-looking plastic contact and I didn't want to risk breaking it any further). The bit we're after is the processor - what needs to be done here is to add some extra non-conductive padding to the top so that when they keyboard's back on it presses down on it and holds it in place.
The guide I was using took the approach of stuffing it full of Post-It notes, but for my padding I used a single piece of paper. The most suitable one I had to hand was one of the CVS pharmacy's typically colossal receipts - I got this one last weekend for buying a packet of Fruit Pastilles or something there.
And after folding the strip of paper into a concertina to form a spring, like Tony Hart used to show us, it needs to be balanced on the processor and the keyboard gently lowered into place on top of it using whatever implements you have to hand. (Getting the keyboard back on again is almost as awkward as removing it - it has to be in exactly the right place or the spacers attached to it will hit bits of the case, and then you have to haul it towards you with the palms of your hands until it slides back into place). Turn it over again, put the screws back if they still line up, and the Thinkpad should be miraculously brought back from the dead.
And with this unlikely and unorthodox solution in place, it seems to be running quite healthily, even if it does have an awkward bulge underneath the Space bar. I would at least hazard that it'll be as usable as usual until proper salvation arrives.
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Date: 2009-07-03 06:48 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2009-07-03 07:30 pm (UTC)