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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 13th, 2011 at 3:32 pm
My son decided his Acer Aspire 3100 need a drink of vodka and orange juice….This was about ^ month ago so I have gotten it out of the closet and started to work on it It comes on fine and the battery will stay charge but there is no picture…Does anybody have any ideals and we also cant find the disc that came with it
February 12th, 2011 at 6:36 pm
Does any one know if you can add a mini PCIe ssd to this laptop? I was contemplating either a 32gb or one of the Intel 80Gb variants.
February 9th, 2011 at 3:51 pm
Alright. I wanted to ask this here, because there might be some different insight on this. Unfortunately, the prognosis seems a tad grim. A few days ago, while I was browsing a website at a friend’s house, my laptop just suddenly froze. Or at least I thought that’s what happened. Come to find out, my keyboard and touchpad spontaneously stopped working. I tried to plug in a wireless mouse and keyboard and that didn’t seem to work at all. Apparently this is a fairly prevalent thing with the 5100 Aspire series. At least so I’ve read on another forum. So, I’m curious if anyone might know if this is a problem with the keyboard, or the motherboard. If it’s just the keyboard, I may just try replacing it. If it’s the motherboard, then it’s not really worth replacing it at this point.
I’ve had the laptop over 6 years now and it hasn’t caused any real troubles at all. I’m just hoping that this isn’t the death of my laptop. It’ll boot up just fine, but I can’t run anything or access the bios or anything because the keyboard and touchpad don’t work. I can’t boot up into a windows recovery either because of it. I’m going to try cleaning it out, make sure the connections are secured and stuff and put it all back together and hope it works. but I doubt it.
So, I’d like to hear you’re thoughts on this.
January 28th, 2011 at 4:13 pm
Can you fit a 1TB hard drive in this model of laptop? I have read that the 1 TB’s are thicker (11-12mm) than the 500GB and lower (9.5mm), and so not all laptops can be upgraded to this level.
January 28th, 2011 at 5:35 am
i hav a acer aspire 5100 the problem is when i start up the screen is bright then all of asudden,
the screen goes almost dark. i hav tired the fn- 6 if i hold them both down then release them the screen is abit brighter . then straight away goes dark again .i hav also tired the brightness key to joy. hav u any ideas please before i sling it at the wall.
January 26th, 2011 at 7:48 pm
Take the battery out hard reboot it without battery in it see if it works….
January 20th, 2011 at 8:52 am
i have an Acer Aspire 5100 labtop. i bought from someone and the usb ports are not working. even the bluetooth and webcam. pls can u help me. i am desperate right now
December 30th, 2010 at 12:17 am
Sometimes when I turn on the computer it spins really fast by itself, but stops after a while and most of the time it just starts to spin slowly and then stops after a few seconds. By the way when I press my finger against the middle of the fan, so that it spins faster, the temperatures drop immediately.
December 29th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
Nice article it really helped me a lot especially when my laptop overheated. I decided to open it up and found out that there was dust building up on the fan.
Now, my problem is my DVD Drive. Followed your instructions but it stil wouldn’t come off. Do I actually need to open it using a screw driver? What I did is pressed eject while the Laptop was on then turned it off then unscrew that little screw on your picture. It didn’t work. It won’t pull out.
December 29th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
Just to say that this is a great page !
Congratulations Laptop Tech !
Btw I have a question : I have seen on your pictures that you’ve a SATA HDD, I have a PATA one, but I’m pretty sure that the SB400 can handle SATA, so have you heard something about the possibility of upgrading to SATA ? (without changing the mobo ^^)
Thank you !