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In this guide I explain how to disassemble a Compaq Presario F700 notebook. The guide might work for some other Compaq and HP models. I think the disassembly steps will be very similar for Compaq Presario F500 and HP G6000 notebook PC. If this guide works for your notebook, please mention the model name in the comments below.
You’ll find tons of spare parts for Compaq Presario F700, F500 notebooks here.
In this particular guide I’m taking apart a Presario F730US notebook.
By the way, if you have a bad/dead motherboard, check out these motherboard repair offers.
Before you start, turn off the laptop, unplug the power adapter and remove the battery.
COMPAQ PRESARIO F700 DISASSEMBLY GUIDE.
STEP 1.
Remove three screws securing the memory cover and two screws securing the hard drive cover. Remove both covers.
STEP 2.
Lift up the right side of the hard drive by the plastic tab to disconnect it from the motherboard. Remove the hard drive.
STEP 3.
Remove both memory modules.
STEP 4.
Disconnect both antenna cables from the wireless card. Remove two screws securing the wireless card in the top left and right corners. Pull the wireless card from the slot and remove it.
STEP 5.
Remove one screw securing the CD/DVD drive and pull the drive from the notebook. Remove the drive.
STEP 6.
Remove all marked screws from the bottom of the notebook.
Yellow screws securing the switch cover (keyboard cover).
Green screws securing the keyboard.
STEP 7.
Start lifting up the switch cover as it shown on the picture below. You’ll have to work with your fingers to disengage small plastic latches holding the switch cover.
Be careful, there is a thin ribbon cable running from the switch cover to the motherboard.
STEP 8.
Now you can lift up the top side of the keyboard and access the connector underneath the keyboard.
The keyboard cable connector is located above the touch pad. Before you pull the cable and remove the keyboard you have to unlock the connector.
Move both sides of the locking tab about 1-2 millimeter up and release the keyboard cable. Now you can pull the cable and remove the keyboard.
STEP 9.
Disconnect the switch cover cable from the motherboard.
Remove the cover.
STEP 10.
Unplug the LCD cable from the motherboard.
Release the wireless card antenna cables. Pull them through a hole in the motherboard.
Remove four screws securing the display panel.
STEP 11.
Lift up and remove the display panel assembly.
In the next guide I will explain how to access and remove the LCD screen with inverter board.
STEP 12.
Remove four screws securing the top cover assembly.
Disconnect the power button board cable.
Disconnect the touch pad cable.
STEP 13.
Remove all screws securing the top cover assembly from the bottom of the notebook. Do not forget three (green) screws in the CD/DVD drive bay.
Remove two hex studs located close to the memory slots.
By the way, the RTC (CMOS) battery can be accessed when you remove the memory cover.
STEP 14.
Start separating the top cover assembly from the bottom assembly. You’ll have to work with your fingers to disengage plastic latches securing the top cover.
Carefully lift up and remove the top cover assembly.
STEP 15.
Now I’m going to remove the motherboard.
Remove one screw securing the motherboard. In other Compaq/HP models there could be more then one screw securing the motherboard.
STEP 16.
Lift up the right side of the motherboard as it shown on the picture below.
Before you remove the motherboard from the base assembly you have to disconnect the audio board cable.
STEP 17.
Remove the motherboard and turn it upside down. There are two more cables to disconnect.
These cables connect the motherboard to the USB/Power connector board.
Finally, the motherboard is removed. As you see on the picture below, the audio board and USB/power connector board are secured to the base assembly.
The motherboard has been removed. Now you can access and replace the cooling fan if you have to.
You can access and replace the processor if you remove the heat sink.
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March 10th, 2010 at 6:29 am
Hi All, I own 2 of the F500’s, both slightly different models, as well as a DV9000, and a F700. These are all identical. The boards, the guts, everything. The reason I make this point is the following.
If you have ANY of these laptops, especially the F500, chck your warranty. Those of you having issues with the Network Card not working, heres the solutions…..
The Network card itself, probably isnt bad. I pulled mine out tonight as a matter of fact and threw it into the F700, works no problem, now the one from the 700, is identical to the one in the 500, i put the 700’s wifi card into the 500, same issue, Amber light, No Wifi. Had to go out and buy a Netgear USB Wifi Adapter for net access on here.
Reinstalling the Drivers will not fix this. Here is the actual problem. Due to the design and manufacture of this laptop series, the Video Card, the Network card and the CPU are relatively close enough to gether to cause a problm ( this is comign from HP themselves by the way ) and something to do with the CPU getting a bit too hot, causes the video chip to run hotter, causing the network adapter to severely overheat.
I noticed the issue a couple months ago when i went to get online and it just lagged out for about 10 minutes. After I finally rebooted I found the bottom to be very very hot, and i now had no network. It came back a few days later, and I did find that if you drain, and i mean completely drain out the battery, ….. let me give full instructions on this in a second… Once it comes back on you probably dont want to turn it off. The switch is worthless anymore, run windows 7 on it and W7 will control it, no need for switch. ( that is if it even comes on.)
Here is another problem with these laptops ( regarding the battery) Should you run this on battery power instead of A/C power, and you run it below 20%, the network adapter will turn itself off to conserve energy… Problem is, if your laptop goes to sleep in this mode, when it tried to wake up it cant get the network card to come back up with it. So to continue from earlier, should you want to try this method, it may help. Drain the battery completely dead with the WiFi switch in the ON position. when the laptop finally dies ( jsut make sure youre not doing anything too important) you want to wait about 15 minutes, try to turn it on, if it turns on, keep doing this every 15 minutes until it no longer will, and the light just flashes at you. Once this happens, wait about 1 hour, ( i know a long time, but this works), then try the laptop again ( without power cord plugged in still). If you still get just the flashing lights, its finally dead, now you want to turn off the WiFi switch, and plug in the A/C adapter. Once plugged in, leave that bad boy there until the laptop is FULLY charged, not a moment sooner. Once its charged completely go ahead and fire it up, and wait for windows to boot, once it does, go ahead shut down as normal, power off, turn switch for WiFi back on, and power on, when windows comes up, you should have wifi again, if not, then you are a victim of the overheating issue, in which case unless you have the secondary slot inside for another minipci device, then you really cant change out the adapter, so buy a USB one. Shoudl you decide to do that and no longer wish to use the one built in, completely unhook if from the inside, and itll cut down on battery drain as well as heat.
Hope this helps someone, should you need any other help with drivers, bios updates, or general information and/or support for the models I listed (F500/F700/DV9000 from HP/Compaq) feel free fo email oziruz at oziruz dot biz and I will get bck to you as soon as i possibly can! Thanks for reading, sorry for typos, hope this helps!
March 9th, 2010 at 9:46 am
Step 9 says Disconnect the switch cover cable from the motherboard. These are small ribbon cable traps and I cannot figure out how to actuate them to release the cable
March 8th, 2010 at 8:21 pm
i have a compaq presario f700 and the problem am having is sometime the wifi comes on and sometime it dont if it dont come on at startup it dont come on at all not even if i turn the swicth on and of i replace the unit and nothing change con you help?
March 5th, 2010 at 10:06 am
perobaja,
Do you have two memory modules inside? Try removing them one by one. It’s possible that one of the modules is bad and the laptop might start properly when the bad module is removed. It’s very unlikely that two memory modules failed at the same time, that’s why I’m asking to test the laptop with each module individually. If no help, probably this is the motherboard failure.
You can search for a replacement motherboard by HP part number from the old motherboard. Usually the motherboard part number is printed on a sticker in the memory compartment and looks like that: SPS # XXXXXX-001 (where XXXXXX is a string of numbers).
Find the part number and search on google or ebay.
March 5th, 2010 at 6:13 am
Hi there,
I have a Compaq Presario F730US and more then 6 months is out of order. Problem is that it can not start up. Power cord I plug in show light, but when I press start button it gives one second light and nothing after that. I tried to restart memory and replace battery but nothing help. Can you give me advise what to do? Which type of motherboard is inside?
March 2nd, 2010 at 6:58 pm
gil,
Do not disassemble the laptop completely. Simply remove the keyboard and spray air into the fan until all dust is gone. Test the laptop after that. If it doesn’t help, I guess you ‘ll have to remove the top cover and clean the heat sink.
Replace thermal grease on the CPU. It’s possible that your original thermal grease dried out and has to be reapplied.
March 2nd, 2010 at 5:24 pm
Hi all!
thanks for the great website
i own an f700 for some time now.
i’m gonna disassemble it like shown here but i wanted to share the problem i have with it
its overoveroverheating!
internet and simple task he can do with loud air fan sounds
games or movies is another thing. after several minutes it just shut itself off
what can be done beside cleaning the fan to better cool the CPU?
thanks!
Gil
February 27th, 2010 at 11:47 am
Kiu,
Try reconnecting the CD/DVD drive. Remove it from the laptop and install back in place. Maybe the drive is not making good contact with the motherboard.
Also, test the CD/DVD drive on the BIOS level. Can you boot your laptop from a bootable CD? You can use any Windows installation CD, live Linux CD, recovery disc for this test.
If reconnecting the drive doesn’t help and it will not boot from a bootable disc, most likely you have a bad drive and it has to be replaced.
February 26th, 2010 at 10:45 pm
I have this Presario F700 since 2 yrs back. Currently I’m facing a problem with the dvd drive. The cd icon is there while I insert a CD/DVD, but the driver won’t recognize it. The problem occurred after I manually ejected a CD while playing. I have tried the solutions given in Microsoft website, including editing the registry, but nothing solved the problem. Any help will be appreciated.
February 24th, 2010 at 10:41 pm
Battery life,
I think you can replace stock battery with more powerful 12 cell battery.
February 24th, 2010 at 10:36 pm
Sam Ali,
It’s hard to tell what’s going on. Could be bad connection between the video cable and LCD screen/motherboard/inverter board.
In cases like that I take apart the display panel and reconnect all ends of the video cable.
Also, it’s possible the video cable is failing. Maybe there is a short somewhere inside the video harness. If that’s the case, the video cable has to be replaced.
February 24th, 2010 at 10:13 pm
Great tutorial seeing all the parts. Upgrading the memory and you confirmed what I had to do. But with that said the battery life on the F700 is the worst I’ve seen. Only one slot for it, so is there an up grade in battery life or something else I can do to extend battery life, which is about 1 hour?
February 24th, 2010 at 9:46 pm
Thanks so much for this easy to understand dissemblance guide.
I have a question and problem with my presario f700.
Lately I’ve been having extreme difficulty getting an image on my monitor when I open up my laptop. I have to constantly fine adjust the monitor up and down the (toward the keyboard and away from the keyboard) until I reach a point where the monitor screen allows me to browse normally. It appears the time required to find this positioning is changing and becoming more precise, to the point I feel sooner or later my monitor screen will just stay black .
Is this a mechanical problem? Is something loose? Or is my laptop just getting old….ITs working fine right now…but only after spending 15 minutes playing with the monitor screen, closing it halfway and opening it halfway until I got it to work while others around me in the library stared as if I was an idiot.
I’d appreciate any help, please ask questions if I wasn’t clear
-Thanks
February 23rd, 2010 at 4:57 pm
F700,
First of all, make sure the wireless card turned on, enabled, etc… Check the settings.
1. Try reinstalling the wireless card driver.
2. Try reseating the wireless card, maybe it’s not making good contact with the motherboard.
3. Reinstall the operating system and driver from scratch.
4. Replace the wireless card.
5. Replace the motherboard.
February 23rd, 2010 at 4:42 pm
My wireless does not work and it has a code 31 error? I can plug in and internet works but, no wireless anymore? Everything else is working fine and wondering what the fix could be?
February 22nd, 2010 at 9:21 pm
chima,
Try turning on the laptop without hard drive. Can you get video on the screen or it’s still doing the same?
February 22nd, 2010 at 1:11 pm
I have compaq presario f700. the problem is that when I switch it on nothing comes on the screen, and after a munite it switches off and come on just immediately. When it trys to load from the hard drive it makes a sharp hissing sound and switches of and on.
please help.
Chima
February 20th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
If it won’t power up, remove the battery, plug in the power and boot without the battery. I have had a Dell and a Compaq respond as dead only due to a failed battery in the circuit. Once the battery was gone or replaced with a good one all worked fine. I know that sounds too simple, but DUH on me twice.
February 18th, 2010 at 5:48 pm
Ok thanks When I bought Laptop it had Vista on it and now i think of it now i do hear from the hard drive,noises… also i know i need to put new thermal paste on the cpu also
thanks!
February 18th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
Turbo1dr,
Nope, it was one of my customer’s laptop.
February 18th, 2010 at 3:23 pm
Shon,
If the memory is detected correctly on the BIOS level, there shouldn’t be any problem with memory.
It’s possible that your laptop boots slow because the hard drive is failing. Even though it passes test, the hard drive still could be faulty. Can you hear any weird noise coming from the hard drive when it loads Windows?
Also, take a look inside the heat sink. Maybe the laptop runs slow because the cooling module is clogged with dust and because of that the CPU overheats and runs very slow. Clean the heat sink and fan with compressed air.
Try reinstalling Windows XP from scratch. Maybe this is just software related problem.
February 18th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
Phil,
That’s strange. Just removing one screw on the bottom should be enough for removing the CD/DVD drive. At least, it was enough for the Presario F700 I was taking apart. Maybe you have a slightly different model? It’s possible that your drive is secured by one or two screws under the keyboard. If that’s the case, you’ll have to remove the keyboard and search for those screws. What is your laptop model?
February 17th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
I saw the pictures of how to take apart the laptop, I removed the screw for the dvd rw and it just wont slide out of the computer, not sure if have to take apart the whole assembly to remove the dvd drive, i unscrewed it, but still it wont come out.
February 17th, 2010 at 5:18 am
Any thoughts on what I asked??? thanks
Hi there
I have a Comaq Presario F700 and the problem I am having with mines is it boots up but when it starts loading to Windows it loads very very slow now and I just end up cutting it off. Also I noticed that it started not showing all my 2GB memory, it now shows memory at 1983(It has always showed 2GB), but in bios it shows 2GB memory. Do I need to reflow the laptop or is it something else? I also checked my memory & hard drive and both are fine after running test on them, thanks in adavnce
February 16th, 2010 at 8:25 pm
Do you have a F700 laptop motherboard that you can peel the yellow tape back to take a peek at those connections?