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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.
January 3rd, 2009 at 3:03 am
hi i have a problem with my acer aspire 5100…i can only use it for 2 hours max! after 2hrs of use the mouse, keyboard wont respond anymore and the sound stop working too…when i turn it off and on again there’ll be no display. but if i let it off for a couple of hours and turn it on again its back to normal lik nothng happened…whats the deal with it?
January 2nd, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Thanx Folks. You’ve saved my laptop
January 2nd, 2009 at 9:15 am
I have a laptop acer 5100 that makes a clicking noise coming from the fan. It stops sometimes, but it later goes berserk. It doesn’t sound like the hard drive. And I opened it up, cleaned out the dust and it still won’t work. There is not a computer technician guy out here to help me. Any idea? I am not sure if I need to replace the fan
December 31st, 2008 at 10:22 am
I was told today that the motherboard on my acer 5100 needs to be replaced, its under warrenty by staples, they want me to send it to them for repair. Thats fine, but all they want to do is replace the motherboard and reset the hard drive to factory settings. I have to much business stuff to loose that was not backed up from December. Any chance that the harddrive can be saved or pulled and installed in another computer to retrieve documents? Will replacing motherboard require resetting harddrive? Thanks
December 31st, 2008 at 1:46 am
Also I did try connecting to an external monitor but didn’t get anything screen wise.
December 31st, 2008 at 1:41 am
My ACER 5100 screen won’t come up, just a black screen. I think the computer is still working but I can’t see what I’m doing. My research shows I should replace memory (i did get a memory message about 30 minutes before this started) or the video card. Does this sound right? Where is the video card?
Thanks.
December 30th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Nice site!
Didn’t see a pic of the BIOS chip. Do you have 1 or know where it’s located? I’m trying to scrub a hardrive for a customer as they forgot password for BIOS and Windows (media SP2) administrator. There is only a limited account that can’t install or uninstall software. The BIOS must be set to disable boot to USB/floppy/CD. I tried another hardrive that had XP on it and that wouldn’t work either. Tried all the normal hacks for windows admin but they don’t work. Can I replace the BIOS chip with 1 that allows boot? Please advise.
signed
Locked up tighter than…
December 28th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Hi, Has anyone replaced the motherboard for the Aspire 5100???
December 28th, 2008 at 1:40 am
Alan Mcgookin,
Not all optical driver are interchangeable. It’s possible that your new driver is configured differently. For example, your old drive was configured as “Slave”, but the new Sony drive is configured as “Cable Select” or vice versa. It’s just a guess.
When you are replacing the optical drive, it’s better to go with the factory replacement.
Can you see the DVD drive in the BIOS when the hard drive is removed?
December 27th, 2008 at 4:49 am
Hi all can someone please help we have an acer aspire 5100 we had a dvd/r drive and it stopped reading we purchased a new sony drive however it will not read post bios stage abd is not visible in the system requirements if any 1 knows how to fix please drop a line on the site kind regards
A