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In this guide I’ll explain how to take apart an Acer Aspire 5100 laptop. I’ll show how to remove and replace major laptop components such as CD/DVD drive, memory, hard drive, wireless card, cooling fan and keyboard.
In the next article I’ll explain how to remove LCD screen and replace inverter board.
First of all, make sure the laptop is turned off, the power adapter is disconnected and the battery is removed.
Both memory modules, wireless card, cooling and and hard drive can be accessed from the bottom. Remove four screws marked with red circles and loosen two screws marked with green circles. Remove both covers.
You can search for Acer Aspire 5100 spare parts here.
Removing DVD drive:
1. Remove one screw (red circle) securing the drive.
2. Push the drive from the laptop with a flathead screwdriver.
3. Pull the drive form the laptop.
Removing hard drive:
1. Pull the hard drive to the right side until it’s disconnected from the motherboard.
2. Lift up the hard drive.
If you are replacing the hard drive with a new one, you’ll have to transfer the mounting bracket to a new drive.
My laptop had a 80GB 5400RPM SATA hard drive installed. You can upgrade it to a larger and faster SATA drive.
100GB, 120GB, 160GB and 250GB SATA drives should work just fine in this laptop.
Removing laptop memory:
1. Carefully spread latches on both sides of the memory module until it pops up at a 30 degree angle.
2. Pull the memory module by the edges.
Acer Aspire 5100 has two memory slots. You can install up to 4GB RAM total. Up to 2GB memory module into each slot. You should use PC2-533 DDR2-667MHz 200pin SODIMM RAM modules.
Removing wireless card:
1. Disconnect both antenna cables. Grab the antenna cable connector with your fingers and unsnap it from the connector on the wireless card.
2. Spread latches on both sides of the wireless card same way as you did with RAM modules.
3. When the wireless card pops up at a 30 degree angle, pull it from the slot by the edges. Remove wireless card.
Removing cooling fan:
1. Remove two screws securing the fan.
2. Carefully disconnect fan cable from the motherboard.
3. Lift up and remove the fan.
My laptop had a lot of dust trapped between the fan and heatsink. This dust buildup kills normal airflow inside the cooling module and causes laptop overheating. You can blow off dust using canned air.
Here’s how you can replace thermal paste between the heatsink and CPU.
Removing laptop keyboard.
In the following steps I’ll explain how to disconnect and remove the keyboard.
1. Lift up the keyboard bezel with a flathead screwdriver as it shown on the picture below.
2. Remove keyboard bezel.
3. Remove two screws securing the keyboard.
4. Carefully lift up the keyboard, it’s still attached to the motherboard.
5. The keyboard is connected to the motherboard via a flat ribbon cable. Before you can remove the keyboard, you’ll have to unlock the connector and release the cable.
6. Carefully move the black tab about 1-2 millimeters up with your fingernails as it shown on the picture below.
DO NOT SEPARATE THIS TAB FROM THE CONNECTOR, IT HAS TO STAY ATTACHED TO THE CONNECTOR.
If you break the keyboard connector, you’ll have to replace the whole motherboard. Be careful.
7. Now you can release the cable and remove the keyboard.
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November 30th, 2008 at 6:07 am
My laptop has vertical lines that cause it to freeze up shortly after booting up.Thought it was a virus so i formated my system and it still happens,because my fan blew i think my processor is damaged will replacing the fan make everything ok?
November 28th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Martin,
Check the touchpad settings, maybe the touchpad is disabled.
For example, on a Toshiba laptop you can enable or disable the touchpad with Fn+F9 shortcut. Maybe you have a similar shortcut on your keyboard?
November 28th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Hi there,
the touchpad on my acer aspire 5100 tends to stop working after the system boots up. Everything in the system is telling me that it’s working correctly, but in reality it’s not working at all. Do you have any idea what could be wrong?
November 27th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Tunde,
First of all check the power adapter. Could be damaged cable inside the power cord.
Also it’s possible that you have bad battery.
If there is a problem with the power jack, you’ll have to remove the motherboard and resolder the jack. You’ll find laptop disassembly instructions in the official service manual.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
I have a compaq nc6400…the charging point on the mobo won’t charge my battery.
pls anything i can do to correct this?
November 24th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Are there any guides on how to remove the motherboard?
November 24th, 2008 at 5:27 am
Graham,
I have the same issue, but with XP. I don’t know what causing it, but just disconnecting power (leaving battery in) for a couple of seconds helps.
November 23rd, 2008 at 12:42 pm
I’m now finding that with Vista installed, it tends more often than not to POST. Just a blank screen with the hard drive light on.
I have to remove the power, remove the battery and try again when it will then boot.
I suspect a flaky CPU and/or motherboard now.
November 21st, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Anton,
1. Remove the keyboard. Disconnect all cables found under the keyboard. Remove screws found under the keyboard (if any).
2. Remove screws from the display hinges and unplug the video cable. Release the wireless card antenna cables. Remove the display panel.
3. Remove all screws from the bottom of the laptop. Also, there could be (not sure 100%) a couple of screws on the back, they are securing the hinges. Remove them too.
4. Carefully separate the top cover from the base assembly. Now you should be able to access the touch pad buttons.
November 21st, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Hi!
How can I get under the touchpad? Its left button started to work funny recently (it reacts even if I touch it gently). I tried, but I couldn’t get the upper panel off.
November 20th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
I tried Hitachi’s drive fitness test ( off Hiren’s utility Cd ) and got random characters filling the screen.
I tried to install Ubuntu server just as a test, and the installer reported a bios error. But I don’t see any new bios’s available. It failed to install past me setting the keyboard.
So, I tried Seagate’s seatools for dos, and the new drive is fine. I then zeroed the whole drive ( as Vista would crash with the partitions I had setup ), and managed to install vista. However, when I tried to enter the user account name, the 5100 froze on me. Third time lucky I managed to create an account.
I’ve had the mouse freeze on me, and page fault in non paged memory, and this is with a new stick of DDR2 667 2gb.
which I passed with memtest86+ twice.
I installed speedfan and temperature is about 60 deg. C.
So, hardware issues somewhere but not sure what to check next.
November 20th, 2008 at 8:19 am
Graham,
Run the hard drive test. I usually use Hitachi’s drive fitness test.
November 20th, 2008 at 1:24 am
I removed the hard drive and successfully completed two passes of memtest86+.
But when I tried to install Vista, I got two blue screens suggestive of hardware failure. Eg stop 0×07
I’m changing to different memory and will try again.
November 19th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Dawna,
I think the best way to find a new replacement CD/DVD drive is using the manufacturer’s part number or drive model number. Remove the faulty drive and take a look at the sticker. Try to find the manufacturer’s part number. Search for this part number on the Internet.
That’s right. There is no cable between the drive and motherboard. The optical drive plugs into the connector on the motherboard. You’ll have to transfer the mounting bracket from the old drive to the new one.
November 19th, 2008 at 7:26 am
I have an acer 5100-3583. The CD/DVD drive is very sluggish and won’t read half of the time. The 3rd party warranty we got is no help at all so we are going to replace the drive. I looked at SlimDrives and they have SATA and IDE/Atapi. NewEgg has a nice Sony that has an ATAPI interface. Which one do I need to get? I think the latter, but I wanted to confirm. Also, I see that you just push the drive out. Does it mean that the new drive will just push right in without the use of any additional cabling?
Thank You.
November 18th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Graham,
Remove the hard drive and run Memtest86+ again. Do you still experience the same problem (random characters) when the hard drive is removed? Maybe your problem is not related to the hard drive at all?
November 18th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
I’m trying to replace the hard drive in one of these laptops. The WD 80Gb drive has a smart drive failure warning.
I’ve tried installing a Seagate Momentus ST9160821AS 160Gb drive, but the system then becomes unstable. It won’t always boot from the hard drive, or, just get random characters on screen when doing a memtest86+ from an ubuntu boot cd. Is there some incompatibility here?
November 18th, 2008 at 9:56 am
[...] it could be a number of things, but the first thing i would try is to reseat the drive, as is sounds like its come loose. THIS PAGE has an excellent step by step instruction on how to do this. [...]
November 17th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
James,
A SATA hard drive has two flat connectors. An IDE hard drive has two rows of pins (47 pins total).
If you google for HTS421212H9AT00, you’ll find it’s an IDE hard drive (not SATA).
So, you’ll have to search for a new IDE hard drive for notebook computers.
November 16th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Hello, great post. I have the same laptop and my hard drive went dead. I am trying to buy a new hard drive and having trouble what will this laptop fit. The laptop initially came with Hitachi Travelstar 4K120 HTS421212H9AT00 Hard Disk Drive ….i am confused in what to buy like does the laptop take SATA or ATA ..i have no knowledge in SATA or ATA. Pls let me know your thoughts.
THanks
James
November 12th, 2008 at 9:29 am
Hey there. Thanks a lot for this tutorials, I happen to have the same model of this Acer Notebook, so it was pretty cool to find a tutorial on taking it apart.
I´ve read around that it´s possible to replace CPU on this notebooks. My processor as you know, is the Turion X2 with 1.6Ghz and L2 cache of 512k. I´m a 3d animator and I use Maya to animate 3d rigs.
It obviously run a little slow, specially when I´m working on the graph editor. Takes ages to move a keyframe.
I belive my processor is the TL-50. I would like to replace for a TL-60, which is 2.0Ghz and has L2 of 1MB. Since they´re are for socket S1, I think it could work, but would be nice to know about someone that has acctually done that ( if you know or have done yourself).
Also is there any chance to replace for a faster graphics card. Mine is the Radeon 1100 128mb shared.
bye and thanks
November 7th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Have anyone successfully unmounted the bracket of the original hardrive? In my case it really feels like the screws are glued and I cant get them loose, not even with the help of my good old friend “CRC 5-56″ :\.
I don’t want to take the risk and mount the new drive without the bracket as it functions as pressure protection.
November 7th, 2008 at 6:50 am
i have an acer 5100 laptop, and i set a recovery, and forgot it. is there any way i could recover the password?
November 6th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Ashley,
Not sure what’s going on. Try entering the BIOS setup menu and then load default settings. Can you see the new hard drive in the BIOS? Try rebooting the laptop again.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Heri Sanchez,
Do you still have the broken piece? You can try this. Insert the keyboard cable into the connector and put the broken piece too. After that secure the connection with sticky tape. Might work.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:26 am
GHUGAN,
1. Could be bad memory. Try removing one of the memory modules and start the laptop with only one module installed. Try different modules in different slots.
2. Remove the hard drive. Try entering the BIOS setup when the hard dive is removed. A bad drive could freeze the system.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Hi, I am fixing this acer 5100 lap top but the clips that holds the keyboard connector are broke,Do you know if there is another way to repair it with out replacing the hole motherboard?
I think that the keyboard works but I have no idea where to purchase the clips you mentioned in step 7.
Gracias
November 6th, 2008 at 9:24 am
what to do if the screen stop at acer bios and automaticlly start entering setup but hang. please help me.
November 3rd, 2008 at 1:49 pm
thanks so much…my harddrive just went caput and I had no idea how to remove it! though, I still have some trouble remove the DVD drive since it’s busted as well…anyways thanks again.
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:07 am
I have tried to upgrade my hard drive in an Acer Aspire 5633WLMi without success – the drive gets to the bios screen with the Acer logo but does not boot into windows. I have cloned the new drive using Acronis Migrate Easy 7.0 and HD Clone without success…Any advice