Repairing Advent laptop ?

[juliaatpcgp]

A friend has passed me their laptop as it gives an error message on boot up.

As soon as I got it home and out of the case I noticed a burning smell. I plugged it in to see the error and it was saying the CMOS checksum was invalid but it wouldn't even let me go into the CMOS to check the settings. Tbe burning smell remained and got worse just in the couple of minutes it was on.

Is it worth trying to open the case to see what's burnt with a view to seeing if it can be replaced ? If so, how do I go about getting instructions on doing this ?

If repair isn't worth it, can you advise me how to remove the hard drive from the laptop so it can be put into another laptop or even turned into a USB drive for recovery of files ? It is a Advent 6411. The panel where the RAM is easily visible but nothing else.

Even if I can't repair it, I may want to open it up to see how to do it and what's burnt (as a learning experience), also I may offer it for sale on Ebay to someone who perhaps wants to salvage it for parts (I've done this before).

I would be very grateful if you can help me.

Regards,
Jay

 

[Nelviticus]

I assume it's no longer under warranty otherwise you'd have sent it off for repair.

If there's a burning smell then I'd guess that the damage is probably going to be too severe for you to repair yourself. To remove the hard drive you will probably have to unscrew a panel somewhere - have a look underneath and see whether there's anything obvious. If not, check the manual or the manufacturer's web site, or failing that unscrew all the panels you see and hope there's a hard drive under one of them!

Once you get the drive out don't put it into another laptop, use an external enclosure to connect it via USB. You can get these very cheaply. If the drive is still functioning it will be easy to copy the files off.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[juliaatpcgp]

I guess I was being a bit optimistic about replacing the mainboard but I saw a really cheap one on Ebay and thought it was worth checking out if I could do it !

I definitely want to remove the hard drive - the only panel I can see immediately is the one covering the RAM chips, I will need to search again for the hard drive one.

I was planning to put it into a USB external enclosure - but why do you say I shouldn't put the drive into another laptop ? Could it have been damaged by whatever caused the burnout ?

My friend says that when she had the laptop the ONLY problem was the CMOS error message on screen, she is adamant there was no burning smell at all, but that smell was the first thing I noticed when I took it out of the case. Is this just a case of her not having had a sensitive enough nose to detect it ??

Thanks for your help.

Regards,
Jay

 

[Nelviticus]

I recommend you don't put the drive into another laptop for two reasons: firstly, if it's electrically damaged it could damage the other machine too (unlikely), but secondly unless it goes into a machine with identical hardware to the old one it won't have the right drivers, and if Windows boots at all it is likely to be unstable.

If you can get hold of a replacement motherboard that's identical to the original then by all means try replacing it. I assumed that you were intending to try finding and fixing whichever component is broken, which is likely to be difficult to impossible. Don't take my word for it though - maybe I'm being overly pessimistic; if the laptop is dead already you don't have much to lose by trying to fix it!

Access to the hard drive might be in an odd place - on my old Acer laptop you have to unscrew the audio connector panel on the side and it's behind there. Because laptops are so compact the designers have to be pretty clever about where they put things.

I'm no electrician but there could be any number of reasons why your friend had a CMOS error and you had a burning smell - maybe the CMOS battery leaked and shorted something out?

Nelviticus

 

[G0AOZ]

Don't think I've taken an Advent apart, but with many laptops to get at the innards you need to remove the panel between the keyboard and the hinges of the screen. There will be screws under the keyboard and screws on the bottom of the case - removing these will allow separation of the upper and lower parts of the case. Watch out for all the little wire connections for keyboard, mouse pad, speakers, etc., etc.

Good luck!

ROGER - G0AOZ.