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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.
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 DC jack harness if it’s bad.
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