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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 11th, 2010 at 9:49 pm
colmart,
Dude, those wide connector inside the caddy are SATA connector.
If you don’t know the difference between SATA and IDE connectors take a look at this picture.
December 11th, 2010 at 8:46 pm
What are those wide pins inside the caddy? Those are not SATA. Those are for the old cable we all used to have inside the cabinets for CD-rom etc? Sata are small and narrow. This is wide like the old IDE connection, and that leads me to belive you can put an IDE drive inside the caddy and connect with good old IDE the drive to the caddy and then put caddy into laptop.
Anyway that does not matter for me cause I just found a brand new roll of ducktape so I will ducktape the SSD to the back of screen and use the pcmcia SATA raid controller. This is cheap and affordable even if christmas is coming
December 11th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
colmart,
I don’t see any IDE connector on the caddy. It has only SATA connector and SATA sticker.
December 11th, 2010 at 8:01 am
Great news 4 me
Found a way around the problem. Might not be sleak or elegant but it will let me us SATA SSD and thereby speed up performance. The solution is is a pcmcia Raid Controller. Cheap and easy.
The controller has 2 x SATA conections. So if I even find a smooth clean external 2.5″ HDD bay it will all be fine. Otherwise I will just plug in the SSD and use duck tape to tape the drive on the back of the screen.
Here it is maybe others can use this as well?
Item image
PCMCIA to SATA e-SATA HDD SSD RAID Controller CardBus
December 11th, 2010 at 5:53 am
Still searching for a way to use my new SSD (SATA) on the Acer Aspire 5102 that has IDE connections between both HDD and DVD.
Today I come across an interresting picture that might show there is an adapter thing out there.
Here is the pic, pls take a look for yourself if you see the caddy had IDE connection on the inside, but there is also a SATA stickker on the caddy. So if one can go from SATA on the Caddy to IDE on the drive one would think there should be possible to go to other way also?
December 10th, 2010 at 11:57 am
colmart,
Nope, they started installing SATA HDDs into aptops just a few years ago.
Many brand new laptops still equipped with ATA optical drives.
December 10th, 2010 at 11:53 am
colmart,
It’s very easy to find out. Remove the optical drive and take a look at the connector.
The following post shows difference between ATA and SATA drives: http://www.laptopparts101.com/cd-dvd-optical-drive/
December 9th, 2010 at 7:10 pm
I was afraid of that yes. But i have seen many types of adapters over the years. And maybe there excist an adapter of some sort that will let me use the SSD via the Pata connection to mb?
Even if SSD will max out Pata transfer rate with ease I will still gain substantial growth in speed over the standard 4.200 rpm HDD. So if anyone knows of adapters or cables with SATA in one end and PATA the other let me know. It will not sit well if I have wasted my money on a product I can’t use at all. Especially with christmas coming up and I rather should have put money into gifts.
December 9th, 2010 at 6:33 pm
colmart,
Most likely it was an article about installing a second 2.5″ SATA HDD or SSD HDD instead of the optical SATE drive in a Dell laptop.
I doubt that you can install a new SSD hard drive instead of existing PATA hard drive.
December 9th, 2010 at 10:28 am
Pls also read comment # 619 + #620 first.
The more I read about Pata vs SATA the more confused I get. Ok the Acer Aspire was a low-priced laptop when it was bought in 2007. But even so how come a big producer like Acer still used old standards the other companies faded away allready? It seems that SATA was defacto standard from 2003 allready. So really the business plan for Acer is to sell old worn-out standards and technology to a price regular consumer applaude because they in their ignaroance og lack of knowledge and or money can afford? Even though Acer will make a rather big pile of cash when despite low priced products they uses outdated parts?
I will for sure never touch another Acer product.