Disassembling Your Laptop Properly

There comes a time in every young man’s life when their computer bites the dust. And they need to take apart their laptop to perform some type of cleaning. When taking apart a laptop, you typically need 4 things, a pen, tape, screwdriver, and maybe a torx screwdriver. With these 4 items you’ll be set to disassemble about 90% of the laptops out there.
First thing is first, we need to turn the computer upside down and start removing all the screws from underneath. When the screws are removed go ahead and wrap them in tape and label them as bottom cover so that you remember where they belong. Once the bottom screws have been removed, go ahead and remove any small covers that present themselves. Go ahead and remove any memory modules and hard drives you find, and it’s also a good idea to go ahead and remove the wireless card. Don’t forget to keep an eye out for any arrows pointing you towards something, it usually means that it is meant to be removed to further disassembly the unit.

With all the bottom screws and covers removed it is time to remove the CD Drive and the screws hidden away underneath the CD Drive. With everything properly removed go ahead and turn the laptop right side up. Check the back of the laptop first to double check and make sure that there are no screws hiding underneath plastic covers. Go ahead and open the top cover, and look down at the keyboard. Many times in order to remove the keyboard you need to push up on it from underneath (Usually through the CD Drive), if not that, then you need to go ahead and look for little holes towards the top of the keyboard, this is a clear indication that you need to put in a flathead and push these levers back in order to raise up the keyboard. Once you lift the keyboard out, you need to remove the cable behind the keyboard in order to make sure it isn’t improperly ripped out. Then go ahead and proceed to remove any screws you see. And any other remaining cable unplugged. Go ahead and check and see how your screen hinges are doing as well, it might be a good time to unscrew and remove the screen from the rest of the computer.

By this point you should have just the palm rest of the computer to deal with, by making sure all the screws on the palm rest are gone it should make removing it a cinch. When lifting on the palm rest, take care that no cables from beneath are still attached, do this slowly as to make sure nothing is ripped. When the palm rest is successfully removed go ahead and start pulling up on the motherboard gently. And when you are given resistance, take a moment to look closely and see exactly which screw you need to remove in order for the motherboard to come loose. Be careful when removing screws, because removing the wrong ones will cause problems in the future and delay getting the computer back up in running when putting it back together.

With all the screws removed from the motherboard it should be ok to take it out and place it to the side. With the motherboard placed to the side you should have easy access to the heat sink and fan on the motherboard. Go ahead and check to see if there’s any dust build up on the vents. And if there is go ahead and clear it out properly to make sure that any previous overheating problem is cleared up. Thank you for reading and visit me at USA Computer Store in Broward Florida! And we are well know for computer repair Fort Lauderdale and laptop repair Fort Lauderdale.