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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.
February 7th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
p.s.
I did try another known good keyboard
February 7th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
I bought a used Acer 5100 and I cannot get the keyboard to function at boot. With out that I cannotinstall my OS to make the cd work or even access the setup function. I suspect that it was flashed wrong. Is there a way to reset the bios or cmos? Other than that the mobo may just be dead or a power chip that I cannot replace.
thanks
February 7th, 2009 at 11:21 am
rob hadcroft,
Have you tried booting the laptop from a bootable CD? Can you?
If the laptop boots from a CD but the CD/DVD drive doesn’t work in Windows, it’s possible you have a software related problem and Windows has to be reinstalled.
February 7th, 2009 at 10:46 am
hi,ihave an acer aspire 5650 and the cdrom has stopped working,the device manager says it is working,looked at the event viewer and there is an error code id 11 the driver detected a controller error on device cd rom0,also went on microsoft help and it says replace the wire,but there is no wire as you no,slots onto the motherboard.my cdrom is a matshita dvd ram uj845s would be glad of your help thanks rob
February 7th, 2009 at 10:03 am
Dani,
It’s necessary to disassemble the laptop and take a closer look at the power jack. Is it fixable? It depends on how badly the jack/motherboard are damaged. You cannot tell without removing the motherboard.
February 7th, 2009 at 12:19 am
hi,
i dropped my acer aspire and now the battery charger won’t fit in the hole properly.. i think the component inside is pushed too far in.
any way of this being fixed?
February 6th, 2009 at 10:52 am
dave p,
…I replaced the processor to no avail. I’ve also checked the memory modules by swapping their positions, reseating them and trying to startup with one at a time.
If it’s not memory or CPU, most likely there is a problem with the motherboard.
Here’s you can try.
You can remove the motherboard (looks like you’ve done before) and assemble a basic system outside the laptop case as it’s done in here:
Laptop is dead. How to troubleshoot the problem.
All you need is the motherboard, CPU with heat sink, memory and external monitor. Try turning it on. If still nothing, most likely the motherboard is bad. If the laptop starts with video and works fine, start assembling it back together piece by piece and test after each installed part.
February 6th, 2009 at 10:27 am
Skippy,
Sounds like a problem with the IDE channel on the motherboard.
Is it possible that you are using wrong screws? Maybe they are too long and when you put them in, one of the screws is touching the motherboard ans shorting something?
Here’s another guess. The motherboard is failing and apparently there is a bad solder joint somewhere on the motherboard. When you install/remove screws you actually flexing the motherboard making it work/fail.
I guess in order to narrow down the problem, you’ll have to remove the motherboard, build the laptop on your bench (outside the case) and find out if it works this way.
Nope, I’ve never seen something like that before. Please post here if you will find the solution.
February 6th, 2009 at 8:46 am
My daughters’ Acer Aspire 5100 (BL-51)”died” suddenly upon startup (i.e. it just didn’t start).As seems to be the case with a few others computers here, upon pushing the power button all lights come on the fan runs for about 10 seconds, the harddrive seems to spin, and then everything just stops (the fan continues to run at low speed). In order to get the fan to stop, the power button needs to be pushed and held for about 5 seconds. During this process there is no bios screen or anything else that shows up on the monitor – it stays black. When I first took the computer apart there was quite a bit of dust packed in the fan/radiator area – that has been cleaned. In addition, when this first happened I was led to believe that it was probably a bad processor due to overheating. I replaced the processor to no avail. I’ve also checked the memory modules by swapping their positions, reseating them and trying to startup with one at a time. Any ideas or next steps in trouble shooting? Thanks in advance
February 6th, 2009 at 7:03 am
I have a really weird problem with a 5100. The POST was reporting the HDD as gibberish and not booting, so I thought the HDD was duff. I replaced the HDD with the same model and buttoned everything back up, but it was still reporting gibberish. Now here’s where it gets strange, I removed the memory/cpu cover to check that nothing was loose I quickly tried it while the cover was off and it started up fine, as soon as I replaced the cover it started reporting the HDD name as gibberish and wouldn’t boot. I tried this several times and it was consistent, with the cover off it booted, with the cover on it wouldn’t. I gave it a thorough once over looking for shorts, but there was nothing obvious. I even tried replacing the screws one at a time and not tightening them as much, but to no avail.
Before I completely strip it down I was wondering if this was something you may have come across before or whether you may have an idea as to what is going on.
Many Thanks