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In this guide I explain how to take apart a HP Pavilion dv6000 series laptop. I’ll be removing memory, hard drive, wireless card, CD/DVD optical drive and keyboard. Please use this guide at your own risk and only if your laptop is out of warranty.
In the next post I’ll be removing the LCD screen and inverter board.
STEP 1.
Turn off the laptop, unplug the AC/DC power adapt and remove the battery.
Remove screws from the memory and hard drive covers. Remove both covers.
STEP 2.
Lift up the right side of the hard drive and disconnect it from the motherboard. Remove the hard drive.
STEP 3.
Remove one screw securing the CD/DVD optical drive. Pull the drive to the left and remove it from the laptop.
STEP 4.
In order to remove the memory module, spread latches on both sides from the memory module. The memory card will pop up at a 20-30 degree angle. Carefully pull the memory module from the slot by the edges. Remove both modules.
There are two wires connected to the wireless card (Wi-Fi card). These wires are antennas. In order to disconnect the antenna cable from the card, grab the gold connector with our finger tips and unsnap it from the card.
Remove two screws securing the wireless card. Pull the wireless card from the slot.
STEP 5.
Now I’m going to remove the keyboard.
Remove three screws securing the keyboard bezel, I marked them with red circles.
Remove three screws securing the keyboard, I marked them with green circles.
By the way, if you are replacing the keyboard, you don’t have to remove memory, CD/DVD drive and wireless card. Simply go from the step 1 directly to the step 5.
STEP 6.
Turn the laptop over and start lifting up the bezel. Be careful, do not lift it up to far because there are wires connected to the bezel. You can see these wires on the last picture.
STEP 7.
After you release the bezel, you’ll be able to lift up the keyboard as it shown on the picture below. Leave the bezel attached to the laptop.
STEP 8.
The keyboard is connected to the motherboard via a flat ribbon cable. Before you pull the cable you have to unlock the connector.
STEP 9.
Here’s how to unlock the keyboard connector on the motherboard.
Very carefully move the connector locking tab to the direction shown by two red arrows using your finger nails. Move it abut 2 millimeters, not more. The tab must stay attached to the connector. All you have to do is release the cable.
WARNING! If you destroy the connector, the internal keyboard will not function anymore. You’ll have to either use the laptop with an external keyboard or replace the motherboard. The keyboard connector is permanently soldered to the motherboard.
After the cable has been released, you can pull it from the connector and remove the keyboard. Replace the keyboard with a new one if needed.
Here you can find new replacement parts for your HP Pavilion dv6000 laptop.
On the picture above you can see how the keyboard bezel is attached to the laptop. Be careful when you lifting up the bezel, you can accidentally disconnect the cables.
UPDATE: In one of the next guides I explain how to completely disassemble HP Pavilion dv6500, dv6600, dv6700, dv6800 notebooks. It should be similar for HP Pavilion dv6000 too.
April 11th, 2009 at 9:50 am
Wow, this site is wonderful. Over the course of the last few weeks I’ve had a problem with my dv6000 laptop and have been spending alot of time searching for an answer, so I’m confident in saying that this is easily the most user-friendly tech site I’ve come across.
I have what seems to be a unique issue that maybe someone can help with. A while back my computer started looping between the start-up BIOS and the Vista loading screen when I would boot it up. Somehow or another I ended up at the recovery console and tried to reinstall windows (I think the original problem was with the MBR, but learned of this too late.) The reformat of the drive went through, but then the recovery console froze. I had to hard reset the laptop and when it came back up, I got an Err2Err3 message. Apparently this is the sign of a missing operating system, so a few days later I tried adding Ubuntu (by this point I was willing to lose my data, I was just trying to get my computer working again.) Ubuntu went through the entire install process and gave me an error message at the end. Then it took me to the liveboot version desktop and froze up on me after I started clicking around, exporing it. I had to do a hard restart.
Here’s where things get really weird. After the failed install, the liveboot cd would not even load for me and the error message changed from Err2Err3 to “Operating System not found”. I turned off the computer in disgust and left it alone for about a week.
Last night, I turned it back on to tinker with it again and somehow the liveboot cd worked. Thankful that the voodoo gods were apparently too preoccupied with something else to focus on this cursed machine, I got to the liveboot Ubuntu screen and ran the internal shredding application. I figured nuking the hd and starting over clean would be my best option after all the trouble I’d experienced. (Trouble which, I must mention, had no easily accessible precident online when I looked for it at every step of this horrible adventure.) Unfortunately for me, the curse was back and the shredding application started returning errors. (Not sure if you’re familiar with Ubuntu, but it gives progress at every step of the shredding process in the form of a “–mb of –Gb shredded” type of count which, for me, came in increments of 13mb. When I say that it was returning errors, what I mean is that after the first 1Gb or so, every progress update was followed by an error message.) With no obvious way to stop the shredder, I did a soft reset and got out of the liveboot desktop, but the shredder was still running onscreen in a BIOS-looking text (black background, white text). I hard resetted yet again.
So, that where I am. I tried another liveboot shredder called KillDisk and it progressed to a certain point, then froze. Being the hard-resetting master I was, I hard reset the laptop, put it away, and walked off feeling utterly defeated. The fact that even a disk shredder would not work on the unit suggests to me a bad hd, but I’m not sure. I could see in the start-up BIOS that the system was registered as a Vista unit, but couldn’t see any details on the harddrive. I had to get the motherboard replaced a while back and I’ve heard that bad motherboards can affect an hd, so maybe that was the problem? What I’d like to know is a)has anyone ever heard of a harddrive rejecting a shredder and if so, was there a solution that would allow the hd to be wiped and reused, b)if the harddrive is faulty, can I just buy a new one, pop it in and treat the computer as new when installing the OS?, and c)Kind of an off-shoot of b, but is there any other issue that could kill a harddrive that I should be aware of? I don’t wanna throw a new one in there if it will just suffer the same fate.
Sorry for the verbose post, but I know how important accuracy is in diagnosing…well, pretty much anything. But especially computers. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.
P.S. I’m outside of HP’s warranty and my geek squad warranty might have been invalidated due to all the tinkering I’ve done. Just wanted to throw that out there.
April 8th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
my kid split coke at a few keys om the keyoard. the keys imdtweem V&M womt work… tried to pull them up & fix them & i camt evem get them ack om mow ..cam this get fixed?
April 8th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Hi,
I have unscrewed all of the screws and my beautiful laptop is now a mess. I need to replace the usb d/c power cable. But to get to the connections, I need to take the main face plate off (the one surrounding the mounse pad). But when I pull, it pulls off all around the edges like something attatched in the middle is holding it down. I don’t want to pull more for fear of breakage. Help.
Dee
April 8th, 2009 at 9:46 am
I tried all the above with no luck. It must be the camera.
Thanks for the info!
April 7th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
11beagle,
Access the device manager, find the entry for your webcam (could be listed in USB devices), right click on the entry and uninstall. Restart the laptop and let it detect the webcam. Does it help?
Also, you can try reinstalling Windows.
If nothing helps, probably it’s bad camera.
April 7th, 2009 at 8:05 am
I have a HP Pavilion dv6636nr that the built in webcam doesn’t work anymore.
I downloaded the latest HP webcam driver version 6.1003.101.0
The webcam is listed in the Devise Manger but has a yellow flag + This device cannot start. (Code 10).
I have tried everything I know including the newest Vista sp 1 driver update.
Any suggestions or is the webcam dead?
April 5th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Yousonofagun,
You can replace the motherboard but you’ll have to find another one with the same part number. Basically, you are replacing your defective HP motherboard with a similar working HP motherboard.
You can do it in desktops but not in laptops. In some cases you can find a better motherboard (more video RAM, bettery chipset, etc…) but this motherboard has to be designed for your laptop. You cannot install motherboard from a different laptop brand.
If your laptop is still under warranty, I would suggest sending it to HP for repair.
April 5th, 2009 at 5:09 am
I guess I should rephrase my question……
If I own a dv6000z CTO notebook RD167AV… and I am sick and tired of the defective GPU/system board installed in this laptop. Are there any other system boards available (I prefer to steer clear of the HP brand) that can be placed into my laptop?
Currently the CPU is AMD Turion X2 TL-60… and the GPU is nVidia GeForce 7200 Go.
Would it be possible to completely switch to an Intel CPU, system board and upgraded GPU? The way I understand it is… these 3 components are integrated into one board.
I dont know if the above questions made any sense lol…. just trying to probe possible routes, instead of sending my dv6000z to HP for a 3rd repair (all they do is switch out the defective part with an identical defective part).
I paid $1600+ for this notebook and hope that there are other compatible system boards for this model.
Any help would be appreciated.
April 5th, 2009 at 4:55 am
I have one of those lemons that HP sold me… dv6000z CTO notebook RD167AV. The GPU is an nVidia GeForce 7200 Go.
Is it possible to completely rid myself of the current defective system board/GPU… and entirely replace this with a compatile system board/GPU from another brand?
I dont know whether laptops are designed like desktops PC’s… you can literally mix and match motherboards/GPU’s etc.
Please advise me as to what system boards will properly function if I want to switch out the defectice HP system board.
Thanks in advance
April 3rd, 2009 at 10:26 am
Rizwan,
Isn’t the video card integrated into the motherboard. I think it is. If that’s the case, it cannot be removed/replaced/upgraded.
When I search for a maintenance manual for dv2630ea, HP site brings me to the manual for HP Pavilion dv2500 and dv2700 notebooks. In these models the video card is a part of the motherboard, so I think it would be the same for your notebook too.