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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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September 20th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
desiree7790,
Take a closer look at the screen when it goes off. Do you still can see a very faint image on the screen?
If the image is still there, most likely you have a problem with the screen inverter board which is located inside the display panel under the LCD screen. The inverter works like a power supply for the backlight lamp. When inverter goes bad, the screen backligth stops working.
September 20th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Acer 5100, the screen started to be black, after while, it’s turn off, when I try to turn on, it just keeps on for some seconds and turn off again, I tried to do different things like remove battery and use the cord only, but nothing happens , how can I fix it?
September 19th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Miahi D,
Instead of moving the laptop, try applying some pressure on different parts of the top cover (keyboard bezel, palm rest, etc…) Will it freeze the laptop?
If the laptop freezes when you press on the top, it’s possible that you have a faulty motherboard. Just a guess.
Also, try reconnecting memory modules. It’s possible that one of the modules is not making good connection with the slot.
September 19th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
scott,
Usually you can see this message when the laptop is trying to boot from network. It happens because:
1. The hard drive is dead.
2. Laptop cannot see the hard drive.
3. There is nothing installed on the hard drive (no OS).
Here are some troubleshooting steps:
1. Enter the BIOS setup menu and make sure the laptop can see the hard drive.
2. Try reconnecting the hard drive. Unplug it from the motherboard and plug back in. It’s possible the hard drive is not making good contact with the motherboard.
3. Try replacing the hard drive.
If you have the same problem with a new hard drive, apparently the motherboard has a faulty IDE channel or defective HDD connector. If that’s the case, you’ll have to replace the hard drive.
First of all, try reconnecting the hard drive.
September 19th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Pavel,
The description says that fan fits Aspire 5100 model BL51. That’s your model.
I would personally prefer a brand new fan.
September 19th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Loriane,
Most likely you damaged the motherboard and it has to be replaced. It’s necessary to disassemble the laptop and take a look inside to find out what else is damaged.
September 15th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
i have an acer aspire 5100 laptop. It has been spilled with water after that it doesnt boot up but the power indicator would light up even I after I dried it up many times. CAN YOU PLS HELP ME…? thanks!
September 15th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
I need to replace a fan on my ACER- Aspire 5100 BL51
I found those two
http://www.laptoprepairco.com/itemdetails/itemdetails.asp?ref=1254&category=fan
http://www.laptoprepairco.com/itemdetails/itemdetails.asp?ref=1282&category=fan
the thing is that my fan has a number ending in 2K00.
Questions:
1. Will any of those fans fit my laptop?
2. Is it better to buy new or pulled part?
Thank you.
September 15th, 2009 at 9:51 am
when i boot the laptop it sporadically locks at a black screen which continually scrolls through the message below.
INTEL UNDI, PXE-2.0(build 082)
FOR REALTEK RTL8139(X)/8130/810XPCI FAST ETHERNET CONTROLLER v2.13(020326)
PXE-E61: MEDIA TEST FAILURE, CHECK CABLE
PXE-M0F: EXITING PXE ROM
it wont go any further. if you shut it off it will reboot to the normal desktop or it will do it again. it has on occasion made it to the desktop and flashed over to this black screen and displayed the same message.
the laptop is 2 years old and has nothing fancy on it. it has also been wiped clean once of all NON OS files and programs. the system now looks as if it just came from the store.
September 13th, 2009 at 5:10 am
Hi, i have an aspire 5100 and for the last 5 days i have a problem with it. i change its position or angle for example if i take it from the table to put it on my lap it freezes. If i keep it on the table everything looks fine and it works normally, but everytime i change its position it stops responding. thanks.
September 10th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Sean H,
Enter the BIOS setup menu. Can you see drives in there? Try loading default BIOS settings. Try reflashing the BIOS.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
I am attempting to repair a Aspire 5100 series, model BL51. Here is my current issue: originally the laptop was giving a missing file error when booting windows XP. Decided to dump and reload windows for my friend. However when I got the laptop home I find that it does not detect the Hard Drive or CD-ROM. I pulled the hard drive and Cd-rom both out and plugged them back in thinking maybe my connection got loose with no luck. I plugged the hard drive into a pc (using a cool little adaptor) and can see that the drive is ok. However I still cannot get the laptop to detect the hard drive or cd-rom drive. I can hear the cdrom spin and I think I can hear the hard drive spin. But no luck on detecting either one. Not sure what my next step should be. Is it possibly the motherboard? How expensive is a new motherboard for this laptop?
September 1st, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Forgot to say in note its a acer aspire 5315
September 1st, 2009 at 11:03 am
Andy Buckingham,
I’m looking at a Toshiba laptop with exactly the same problem right now.
I believe this button is a part of the top cover assembly. You can buy a replacement top cover here. This part is $30.
September 1st, 2009 at 10:55 am
Not sure if you can help, i’ve got an Aspire 5103 Laptop and my left hand touchpad button has physically boken so that the plstic button is dropping loosely below the surface and gets jammed. Can the touchpad be easily removed or do you know anywhere where touchpad reaplacements can be obtained ?
Thanks
September 1st, 2009 at 2:52 am
hi i need hellp my acer aspire 5100 is playing me up i keep geting a error code 200 can you hellp plesssss
September 1st, 2009 at 2:11 am
I accidentally dropped my laptop,when booting it up im getting a message saying file may be damaged it gives option to start up windows or to automatically repair itself, tried both options but none working,have also tried when starting up f8 options ie last good configuration etc,my final try was my manual (i want to restore my computer to its original settings without a recovery cds) it set up to do this but failed also now when starting up im just getting a blank screen HELP
August 31st, 2009 at 5:47 am
I would like to know how to replace a defective wiring from the integrated webcam on an acer aspire 5100. It seems like there is a lose connection cause the webcam come on and goes off everytime the screen is tilted.
August 30th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Hi
I have Acer Spire 5101AWLMi. From building had 512 ram and 6 months before I upgrade to 2GB ram and worked perfectly. Now suddenly does not recognize the 2 ram and must be only one in the ram slot to boot. Otherwise, with the 2 ram on their slots doesn’t even boot and doesn’t open to give access at bios. So I have to put only the one ram to work. I try the ram on other laptop and works fine. I also test the HD and works fine as well. Could you please help on that?
August 27th, 2009 at 9:15 am
Lucia S,
It depends. I don’t know what you want to keep from the old hard drive. Most people keep just “My Documents” folder which includes “My Pictures”, “My Music”, “My Videos”, “Favorites” etc…
If you don’t want to keep anything, you don’t have to make any preparations. Simply replace the hard drive and run the recovery disc to reimage it back to factory defaults.
If the laptop works fine with a 250GB drive, it should work fine with any other larger drive. I think you can safely use 320GB or even 500GB drives.
August 27th, 2009 at 3:50 am
Oops, meant to write that I want to replace my laptop (Acer aspire 5103) internal hard drive and need your advice about what to do back up wise before I attempt this… also, could you advise me whether 250 gb is the biggest memory it will take or could I go higher?
(at present have 2gb ram).
Really appreciate your help.
August 27th, 2009 at 3:46 am
Hi, I’d like to replace my external hard drive and really appreciate the advice you’ve provided… can you tell me what I need to do back up wise before I do this– and is it something that you believe a total newbie can do without wrecking the laptop?
Really appreciate your site.
Many thanks,
Lucia.
August 24th, 2009 at 7:51 am
I have an Acer Aspire 5670 and am experiencing intermittent problems. Sometimes when I start it its fine, most times the mouse and keyboard does not work, when the keyboard doesn’t work sometimes the wireless internet and usb ports don’t work either. I have not idea what is wrong with it. Also, I have an Acer Aspire 5000 that won’t even turn on, the motherboard needs to be replaced. Would I be able to put the motherboard from the 5670 into the 5000?
August 24th, 2009 at 4:57 am
Firstly, thanks for getting back to me, really appreciate it.
I should point out that I did have a power connection problem which I believe is resolved now, although it did result in a failed restore which half formatted the hard drive. Even so, I would expect the message ‘nltdr is missing’ and be able to access BIOS to run from back up.
Have tried all permutations of RAM installation with no success. New hard drive has come and been installed, (waste of money but they’re pretty cheap these days) and it didn’t work.
The unit powers up, appears to try to reference the hard disk but obv there is no OS to load and because I have a blank screen, which flashes on start up but nothing else, I can’t tell it to boot from disk. Any further suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
August 20th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Chris Shepherd,
Check the memory module. If the laptop starts without video, the first think to check is RAM.
Make sure it’s connected correctly. Try reconnecting RAM modules.
Try removing RAM modules one by one. Test the laptop with each one separately.
August 19th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
I have an Aspire 5100 and have had an issue with intermittent and random shutdowns. I think I have cured this but now upon switch on, everything appears to start but I have a blank screen. I have subbed a new screen in with the same outcome, not sure if the hard disk is going live though, would replacing this be your next step? Help anyone, it’s driving me mad!!
August 18th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Petrocles,
I don’t think that LCD replacement is related to laptop freezing in any way.
You can get your files using these methods. Back up your files and run the recovery disc.
August 18th, 2009 at 3:10 am
I have an acer aspire 5100 series. I broke the screen but using your guide i replaced the screen with no problems. However, i attempted to install a payg usb modem and it crashed the laptop (froze). Since then it always crashes on the windows xp loading screen (freezes and does nothing) whether on safe mode or last known good configuaration or normal. i have opened the pc and cleaned the fan.
i suppose the next step is to attempt to format and re-install but i have documents which i need to retrieve from hard drive.
excellent website
August 15th, 2009 at 6:45 am
My laptop charger is not working and i bought a new acer charger but still not working. i don’t know what to do next. please if it the fault of the power system what should i do. Acer Travel mate 4200
August 15th, 2009 at 6:07 am
Some time ago I asked your advice regarding the built in web cam on the Aspire 5610. I’d like to thank you for helping me out with this problem on this infernal laptop. The advice that you gave fixed a problem which a whole building full of tech guys couldn’t sort.
The problem is the web cam works only intermittently. The reason is that the very small wires are routed through the base of the lid, under the right hinge, under the panel leds and plugged onto the m/b at JP38. The exact spot at where these tiny wires are prone to bending is at the hinge area and this should be the first place that people should look where connection problems are occurring.
Many thanks.
Kev