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In the following guide I remove the motherboard from a Compaq Presario CQ50 laptop. Also this guide should work for Compaq Presario CQ 60/CQ70 and HP G50/G60/G70 laptops.
If you need replacement parts, you can find them here. Just search by the part name and laptop model.
Start laptop disassembly with removing the battery.
STEP 1.
Remove memory, hard drive and wireless card covers.
STEP 2.
Remove three screws securing the hard drive assembly.
Slide the hard drive assembly to the right, disconnect it from the motherboard and remove from the laptop.
STEP 3.
Remove both memory modules.
Disconnect two antenna cables from the wireless card. Remove two screws and remove the wireless card from the laptop.
STEP 4.
Remove one screw securing the DVD drive.
Pull the DVD drive from the laptop.
STEP 5.
Remove all screws from the bottom of the laptop.
Disconnect the CMOS battery cable from the motherboard.
STEP 6.
Carefully lift up the keyboard as it shown on the picture below.
STEP 7.
Access the keyboard cable connector underneath the keyboard.
Unlock the connector before removing the keyboard.
In order to unlock the connector you’ll have to move the locking clip (white) about 2-3 millimeters towards the LCD screen.
The locking clip must stat attached to the connector base (dark brown) as it shown on the picture below.
Now you can release the cable and remove the keyboard.
STEP 8.
Unlock the power button cable connector.
On the following picture you can see the connector in the unlocked state.
Now you can remove the power button board cable from the connector.
STEP 9.
Remove the plastic cover.
STEP 10.
Disconnect the video cable connector from the motherboard.
Disconnect the webcam cable.
Pull the wireless card antenna cable through the opening in the top cover.
STEP 11.
Remove screws securing the display hinges.
STEP 12.
Remove the display assembly from the laptop.
In the next post I explain how to remove the LCD screen, inverter board and hinges from the display assembly in HP G50/G60/G70 laptops. It’s similar for Compaq Presario CQ50/CQ60/CQ70 laptops.
STEP 13.
Disconnect the touch pad cable from the motherboard.
Remove screws securing the top cover assembly.
STEP 14.
Start separating the top cover assembly from the laptop base.
You can use a guitar pick in order to split the laptop case.
STEP 15.
The top cover assembly has been removed.
STEP 16.
Remove one screw securing the left speaker.
Remove the left speaker from the base.
STEP 17.
Remove four screws securing the motherboard.
Disconnect four cables from the motherboard.
STEP 18.
Remove the motherboard from the laptop base.
The motherboard is dead? Check out these motherboard repair offers.
STEP 19.
Disconnect the cooling fan cable from the motherboard.
STEP 20.
Loosen four screws securing the cooling fan assembly.
STEP 21.
Remove the cooling fan assembly from the laptop.
STEP 22.
In this model the power jack is not soldered to the motherboard.
You can unplug the power jack cable from the motherboard and replace it with a new one if needed.l
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April 20th, 2010 at 12:24 pm
adammaddock,
1. The AC adapter is not connected to the wall outlet.
2. The DC hardness shown on the last picture is disconnected from the motherboard.
April 20th, 2010 at 11:57 am
Hey, thanks for the guide, after replacing my fan and putting the laptop back together and booting back up without any issue my battery, after running out, would no longer charge and the laptop won’t be powered by the mains lead…any clues?
April 14th, 2010 at 4:13 pm
Thank you so much. My friend was complaining about her computer over heating all the time. This article helped me speed up her system, along with fixing her overheat problem (the “air-in-a -can” did nothing). Thanks again.
Kenneth
April 13th, 2010 at 7:21 am
I’m working on a CQ50 for my cousin, but i’ve gotten stumped by removing the video cable. is there a trick to it, like with the keyboard or power board ribbons? or do you just have to gently pull on it till it lets go? and if that’s the method, how to you put it back in? The cable seems to be very snuggly attached, and doesn’t seem like it would slide back in easily.
April 7th, 2010 at 3:59 pm
I used these instructions to remove and replace the CPU on my CQ60 Presario,
it was so easy to do so following the steps and very pleasurable to know that you did accomplish such a task without having to mess up anything.
Great step by step instructions, congrats and appreciate the walk through
April 1st, 2010 at 1:10 pm
jas,
I don’t think that removing the top cover will help much. You will not be able to push the pin out of the jack even if the top cover.
You’ll have to try something different. Not sure if I can give you a good advice in this case.
April 1st, 2010 at 9:47 am
Brian,
Maybe the Wi-Fi card simply turned off?
Is there any way to turn on the Wi-Fi card using a shortcut on the keyboard or standalone Wi-Fi button, I don’t remember that off the top of my head.
Check the device manager, make sure the wireless card is enabled.
I think it could be something simple.
April 1st, 2010 at 4:20 am
I have just dismantled my compaq-presario cq50 laptop following your step by step guide and repaired the fault after rebuilding my laptop everything works fine apart from my wirless card. At start up the light is blue for a second then changes to orange when I press the wirless button it stays at orange but says that wlan is off or wlan is disabled. I think that the wirless card may be at fault as it worked ok before I dismantled the laptop. Is there any way I can test the card.
Thanks Brian.
March 25th, 2010 at 9:27 am
where would I buy the CPU fan for the CQ50? and thank you for this walk through.
March 22nd, 2010 at 7:27 pm
thank for the step by step guide. I have one question before i start taking apart the laptop, accidentaly dropped the laptop while the head phone pin was plugged into the headphone jack in the front of the laptop. The pin cracked and half of the pin is still situated inside the headphone jack. After taking apart the laptop, can i push the pin out of the jack or is there any other way we can overcome is unusal situation? your comments will be much appreciated.
March 15th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Thanks so much for a wicked guide to the inside of this laptop. A tiny peice of plastic holding the power jack had broken meaning the power cable could not be plugged in enough to connect! Was really stressed till i found this guide as I got as far as removing the power switch plastic board and thought i had plulled out the ribbon cable breaking off its connector (which was actually the cable lock!) although i did break this of the motherboard i figured how to get it back on and plug the power switch back in! Managed to follow the rest of the guide and superglue the power jack back to were it should be! Thanks a lot for saving me the embarrasment and expense of having to get this all looked at, thought i was going to have to resort to PC World! x
March 13th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
Great post!
Thanks a lot for your work, from Spain =)
March 6th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
Have problem with replacing the DC jack. The old had broken connections and after recieving a new one, could not determine which leads were to be soldered to which pins and such. Is it possible to get a color photo showing which leads in the harness are to be soldered to which pins/ connectors on the jack?
March 4th, 2010 at 8:30 am
Thank you for your prompt response.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:19 pm
Michael,
Nope, the fan is mounted inside the laptop case, under the motherboard. In order to access the fan you’ll have to go though all these steps.
March 3rd, 2010 at 7:03 pm
Hello
Great guides. I love the precise steps. I want to clean and oil the fan on the cq50 because it is loud is there an easier way to get to it without going though steps 1-21?
thanks
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:00 am
Kevin,
I assume that you make notes while taking apart your laptop.
If I start making notes for every single screw, it will take me forever to complete one guide.
March 3rd, 2010 at 1:07 am
Thanks =D great guide! Just missing one thing though… is it possible you could show what type of screw goes where? I have 1 screw left over that doesn’t fit in the last hole, so obviously I have put 1 screw into the wrong hole. Would be very helpful and much appreciated if this information could be added =D
February 20th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
Steve Whisman made a good point – it often isn’t very obvious how to remove keyboard surrounds.
In this case, you need to push the keyboard up, towards the screen, by about 4-5mm, and this releases many plastic catches, that go underneath the metal case underneath, then the surround easily lifts off. If you don’t know that you have to push it up towards the screen first, you could have problems lifting it off. I think it would help to add this information to the tutorial – but it’s a GREAT tutorial, by the way, you saved me a lot of hassle getting inside my CQ50.
The only problem I have now is that I haven’t been able to fix the original problem I had – my CQ50 turns on, but the screen is blank most of the time. Sometimes it brings up the POST screen, and I can get into the BIOS, etc. and sometimes it will boot from a CD, (Acronise True Image), but won’t boot from Ubuntu on a CD.
When I had the motherboard out of the case, I connected it to the screen, had redone the CPU paste on the CPU, and had that all connected, put some RAM in, the on/off button connected, and the keyboard, and it turned on perfectly every time, straight into the POST screen with no problems. I tried this about twenty times and it worked perfectly every time. But I didn’t have the hard drive attached, nor the DVD drive, so couldn’t check if it would boot into something.
Now that I’ve put it all back together (real easy thanks to this great tutorial), I still have the old problem – it powers up, but rarely even displays the BIOS. When it does, if I try to get it to boot a CD, it sounds like it’s reading the disc, but it won’t load it. (The hard drive isn’t set up with Windows yet so I can’t test it properly.)
Is it likely to be the BGA on the NVidia chip?
February 4th, 2010 at 8:17 am
Good guide, thanks
My webcam cable was so firmly wedged in that despite my extremely careful attempts to remove it without it breaking, the cables ended up ripping out of the socket.
I’m now attempting to solder them back on, but they’re so tiny it’s proving a nightmare! Any tips?
Paul
January 30th, 2010 at 9:57 pm
thanks for the help, i have replaced my motherboard with exactly the same thing, when i turn it on however, the fan goes, the leds light up, but my screen will not turn on. how do i fix this?
thanks
January 25th, 2010 at 8:43 am
I have a G50-104NR that came with an Atheros B/G card. Tried replacing with an Intel 5300 B,G,N car. Installed the drivers that were downloaded from the HP site for for Vista 32 bit. Device Manager sees Intel PRO/Wireless and says it is working properly but the device can not find a network connection. Windows troubling shooting says the device is not enabled or drivers are not loaded properly. Do I need to uninstall the Atheros drivers and the HP Wireless software to get this to work?
January 22nd, 2010 at 7:53 am
Thanks, I will try that.
January 18th, 2010 at 4:29 pm
Mike Sorrenti,
1. CPU is not seated properly or not locked in the socket.
2. Memory modules are not seated properly.
January 18th, 2010 at 11:56 am
I bought a AMD mother board and CPU for my compaq cQ50. The board that was in there was an Intel. My computer will turn on now but will not boot up. Do you have any ideas?
Thanks;
Mike Sorrenti
January 15th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Thanks for this! It is always nice to know what to expect when taking apart your laptop. I’ve been planing to dismantle my HP to try and figure out why my usb connections disconnect/revert to usb1.1 whenever I slightly move my screen. It has been aggravating the hell out of me for weeks, but thanks to these instructions I don’t have to hesitate anymore.
January 4th, 2010 at 10:27 pm
Thanks for this website.I was able to change the keyboard on my Compaq CQ 60. When you remove the battery there are 3 screws that have a picture of a keyboard next to them. I believe those are the only screws you have to remove to get the keyboard off. For other readers try that before removing things like your memory and WIFI card if all you are doing is replacing your keyboard.
January 3rd, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Steve Whisman,
I’m glad that this guide worked for you. I didn’t miss the step, I just thought that most people can figure it out as you did.
January 2nd, 2010 at 11:12 am
I successfully replaced the keyboard on my Compaq C60 using these instructions. I found a step missing between steps 5 and 6. The keyboard surround that houses the power switch needs to be gently pried up to release the keyboard.
Thanks for the very useful info.
December 21st, 2009 at 10:58 pm
[...] In the next post I explain how to remove laptop motherboard. [...]