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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 18th, 2012 at 6:04 pm
@ Ollivia Kennedy,
Most likely it happens because the laptop cannot see the hard drive. There are a few different possibilities:
- the hard drive missing
- the hard drive wiped out and not partitioned
- the hard drive failed
Enter the BIOS setup menu and take a look if the hard drive detected by the BIOS.
You see this message because the laptop skips the hard drive and trying boot from the network.
December 18th, 2012 at 5:30 pm
hi i need help asap with an acer aspire 5100 i brought from my mate it loads up to acer then when i try to get in to it alls it does is go over this intel undi,pxe-2.0 (build 082)
for realtek RTL8139(X)/8130/810X PCI Fast Ethernet Contoller v2.13 (020326)
PSE-E61: Media Test Failure,check cable
PXE-MOF:EXITING PSE ROM.
CAN I PLEASE GET SOME HELP ON WHAT IS WRONG AND WHAT TO DO THANKYOU SO VERY MUCH
OLLIVIA KENNEDY
November 15th, 2012 at 2:45 pm
can only get my acer 5100 to boot up if i lean on the left hand side below fn key after it comes on it is ok for awhile.tried replacing the hard drive. that didn’t fix it. can anyone help
October 4th, 2012 at 11:42 pm
hello bibi
you can try to buy another wireles card or buy one Alfa adaptor
June 20th, 2012 at 1:38 pm
good day sir! mine is aspire 5100-3336 i format my laptop, where ca i get the boot disk “Erecovery” to return to factory setting, and where to get all the drivers especaly for the graphics…thanks sir
June 20th, 2012 at 4:17 am
hi i have this aspire 5100 i have issue on gaming even with the lowest specs of games even a browser games i failed to play it moves slowly and even a movie it looks like buffering i update latest driver and latest codec for the video still no go, i try to degrade the OS into xp but can’t install the windows. any idea pls i need help
June 7th, 2012 at 9:44 am
Hi, very informative your guide!
can you explain how to get to the touch-pad, my left mouse-key broke. Until now I was’t able to open the case. Thanks for you help in advance!
Greetinx from Germany
Best regards
Dirk
May 17th, 2012 at 4:05 am
Parabéns muito bom, salvou meu note!
April 12th, 2012 at 1:32 pm
i have this type of laptop my wirless is disconected what can i do
March 22nd, 2012 at 11:26 am
i have Aspire 5101… LCD screen display does not show anything and keyboard is not working when i power on… so i linked with a desktop CRT monitor and switched display mode …. after that i can see display on desktop CRT monitor and keyboard is still not working… can u tell me which causes can be and how to fix it?