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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.
Find brand new replacement laptop batteries in stock and ready to ship your way.
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.
January 8th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
ray,
I’m not familiar with this model, but if it takes a 40GB drive, it will take a larger drive too.
I think you can safely install 60GB, 80GB, 100GB or 120GB drives.
January 7th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
i hope u can help me, i have a akhter arima m621 uc,i have been to the main web site found spec on it but can’t find what it is, e-machine or gateway
i am after sercive repair manual.i am after upgrading the harddrive from 40g to what ever it will take plus upgrading the drives.
thank you.
January 6th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Kev,
I don’t know that of the top of my head, but this cable will be coming from the display panel.
You can remove the keyboard bezel and take a look at the cable coming from the display assembly.
There should be LCD cable, wireless antenna cables and webcam cable. Follow the webcam cable to the connector.
January 6th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Hi, I’ve been searching for a site like this for nearly a year! Well done on the photos and descriptions.
I have a problem with the Logitech built in webcam. There seems to be a faulty USB connection to it. Can you point me to the internal connections to the webcam please? Its for the Aspire 5610.
Many thanks in advance.
Kev
January 5th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
thanks for the reponse!
ok i’ll the memtest though i already tried the second suggestion you gave(tried to tun the lappy with one memory at a time and still the same problem)
will inform you tomorrow thanks!
^_^
January 5th, 2009 at 11:33 am
I have an aspire 5100. It crashes everytime it goes into windows. Won’t open in safe mode. Bios password protected I don’t know the password. Tried some standard back door passwords no luck. For $150.00 Acer will remove something off the hard drive which we remove the bios password. Someone mention something about jumpers but I don’t have any idea. I have a windows xp disk but I can’t access the cd drive. Anyone have any ideas or potential backdoors for Phoniex bios.
January 5th, 2009 at 7:55 am
My 5101AWLMi originally had one 512 MB RAM stick.
I just installed an upgrade from Crucial (2 x 1GB sticks).
It only reports 1GB of RAM though. Any thoughts why it only sees half of the new memory ?
January 5th, 2009 at 12:38 am
Michael Burgess,
I believe you’ll have to disassemble the whole laptop and remove the motherboard. I think the CMOS battery is soldered to the motherboard.
January 5th, 2009 at 12:31 am
ray,
Sounds like a software problem and you’ll have to reinstall the operating system. Call Acer and purchase the recovery disc from them, it shouldn’t be very expensive. Run the recovery disc and reinstall everything back to factory defaults. It should fix the problem.
January 5th, 2009 at 12:26 am
ian,
Also, that could be memory related problem. Run memory test and see if it comes with errors.
If you have two RAM modules installed test your laptop with each module separately. Remove one and test the laptop, then remove the second one and test again. Does it fail the same way with only one module installed?