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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.
December 13th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Keyboard is NOT working on boot up.
December 13th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Jim,
First of all try this. Restart the laptop and press F8 when laptop starts. It should take it to the boot menu. Select “Last Known Good Configuration” and restart the laptop. Can you boot now?
December 13th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Laptop was loading xp service pack 3 and upon restart went through startup sequence and stopped at window login. Keyboard, touchpad, usb ports donot work. I can’t login. Will not boot CD either. HD seems to start fine, just all input devices disabled. Help!!!
December 10th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Shay,
Could be software related problem. Here’s what you can try.
1.Press F8 button on startup and it will take you to the boot menu. Select “Last Known Good Configuration” and press Enter.
2. Try reimaging the hard drive using the recovery process. This will take your laptop back to factory defaults.
3. Run diagnostics test on the hard drive. You’ll find many HDD testing tools in the Ultimate Boot CD.
December 10th, 2008 at 10:13 am
My acer 5100 starts to boot up but it hits a black screen and it keeps reloading that page. Form my research it seems like the hard drive is dead. Is this the problem or is it something else?
December 8th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Doris,
Could be a software related problem, maybe your laptop is infected with a trojan or spyware.
Instead or replacing the hardware, I would try to reinstall software first.
Backup all personal files and reimage the hard drive back to factory defaults from the recovery disc. This will take your laptop back to the original default state and you can start from scratch.
December 7th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
This is a wonderful site,thanks for it.
I have an Acer Aspire 5100-5023 w/AMD Turion 64×2 @ 1.8 Ghz, Radeon Express 1100 -512mb HyperMem, 2GB DDR2. I have been trying to decide whether it is my graphics card or RAM that is unable to keep up with some of the programs I am using because at times the whole system seems to slow to a crawl. I was sure it was RAM related since the slow-down didn’t start until after I had installed Office 2007, but now I’m unsure since it happens even without Office running. Any thoughts or suggestions? I have considered changing both the RAM and graphics card, could you suggest a possible replacement for the graphics? Thanks.
December 6th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
An update on my situation. I spoke with Acer tech support .. who told me it was out of warranty. Thanks Acer. They did quote me for a new mobo.
In deperation, I bought a new WD 160Gb drive to replace the new Seagate momentus 160Gb drive. I then cloned the original faulty drive to the new drive using a desktop PC ( the sata connections are the same for laptop and desktop drives ).
It now works flawlessly. Either the Seagate tools couldn’t detect the problem, or, there is some critical timing issue that was causing the problem.
December 4th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Marcus Evans,
I’m not sure if an Aspire 5100 can support such a large drive.
If your laptop can support a 500GB drive, it’s not necessary to upgrade the memory. It should work fine even with 2GB.
December 4th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Chris,
Here’s what I found for your. It’s the official service manual for Acer Aspire 5110/5100/3100 laptops with step-by-step disassembly instructions.