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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 19th, 2008 at 1:35 am
Thank you for this web site and the Acer instructions. Great stuff!
I’m repairing a laptop for a co-worker, an Acer Aspire BL51. She DROPPED the poor thing and the screen came completely off, the WiFi wires broke,and the camera wires broke.
I fixed the screen easily enough by building brackets for the hinges; the cable was OK. The other wires will be easy for me.
But there is a new twist… The battery ran out of juice, so she gave me the charger. It didn’t help, so I tested it and found it was broken. She sent me her other charger, which I tested and know to be working. With it plugged in, the laptop still would not power up, so I let it charge for more than 24 hours. Still will not power up. I tested with the battery in and with the battery out, but no go. What happens when I press the power button is the power light comes on and the fan starts up, then, after about a second, it all shuts off. That’s it, nothing more. The laptop was working fine before the battery ran out. I had reconnected the screen for testing and all seemed fine. I can find no loose connections and there is no loose junk inside (I removed something that looked like a pair of super-sized cat claws made of plastic.)
Any suggestions? Is there something about the panel at the top edge of the keyboard which contains the power button, etc. that is critical? I know there is a little button there that tells the laptop the screen is closed. That switch works fine. Surrounding that button, but not touching it, is some foil that seems to be a ground point that should be touching matching ground points on the body of the laptop like a jumper. Jumpering those points did not help.
Any ideas you can give would really be helpful! Thanks.
HNKelley
December 17th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Tom,
Maybe in the service manual? Comment 36.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Is there a manual availeble for installing bluetooth (internal)? Because i’ve got the button, but the hardware is just forgotten
December 17th, 2008 at 7:50 am
Hy,
I’ve got problems with my usb. All ports seemes to be dead. It’s the same laptop with yours, do you have any idea how to repair them? They appear in windows but when i plug some device in one of them stops and say unrecognized device. I’ve read a lot of posts about usb on acer and seems that is a big problem. Do you have any idea on this? Could they be disabled or changed without to change motherboard?
Thanks,
Vali
December 15th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Oh man, thank you so much. Such a simple suggestion solved my touchpad problem. Sometimes you get stuck in comfortable routines. I repair desktop and laptops. The touchpad on my new-to-me Acer Aspire 5100 stopped working, except right at the desktop for a couple of seconds at bot. I’ve been trying to resolve this for 3 days. I had no idea there was a ‘fn’ toggle to disable it, right there in front of me on the ‘f7′ key! Thanks a bunch, dude!
December 14th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Jim,
That’s a good idea to recover files from the hard drive.
1. Purchase an external USB enclosure for notebook hard drives.
2. Remove hard drive from the failed laptop and install it into the enclosure.
3. Connect the enclosure to any working computer via USB and wait until your hard drive is detected and installed.
4. Transfer files.
December 14th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Tim,
I would call Acer and purchase a new set of recovery discs from them. It shouldn’t be very expensive.
December 13th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
The only keyboard that will connect is a usb. I have tried an external usb keyboard and it will not work. This problem has been a first for me. I guess I will need to get an usb hookup for the hard drive.
December 13th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Hello, I have a acer 5100 and I was wondering if I can reformat a laptop hard drive with a desktop computer? I made a back up CD of my acer but it won’t accept it. I screwed up by putting in a partition and put windows vista on it so I had wind XP & vista. The vista was slowing the computer down bad so I used partition magic 8.0 to delete the vista partition and now I can’t enter my windows XP. Can I use the back up CD I made of the hard drive and reformat it through my desktop? Thanks for the help
December 13th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Jim,
I don’t think it’s a software related problem. If the keyboard is not working on startup, apparently there is something wrong with the hardware (probably motherboard related).
Do you have an external keyboard for this laptop? You can try booting with an external keyboard and access the BIOS setup menu. Set BIOS to defaults.