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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.
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.
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April 7th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Bought my son a laptop, Acer 3634Wlmi.The laptop picture is dim(You can just make itout).Currently it works with an external monitor, so I bought a second hand screen and replaced the other 1.Still the same problem. Managed to get another 3634 , which had screen flicker. I replaced that screen with the second hand screen and the screen works perfect. So know I know the problem in the other 3634 is elsewhere, somewhere in the base.Any ideas?? Both laptops work excellently. thx in advance Iain. P.S Have checked all connections from screen to base(only 3 lol), and all fine
April 4th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Vero,
Apparently there is a problem with the motherboard. There is not much you can do.
Without USB ports you cannot use external keyboard or mouse.
Without keyboard and touch pad you cannot enter the BIOS setup and check the settings.
I guess you’ll have to replace the motherboard.
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Hi! I just received a “damaged” Aspire 5100. The USB ports, keyboard and mouse pad aren’t working. Apparently the first thing to go down were the USB ports, then the keyboard and pad stopped working as well.
It boots up nicely, but I can´t click on the username to enter the password.
Any ideas??
April 3rd, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Doug Seton,
Apparently, you’ve damaged the motherboard.
I doubt that cleaner will help. You’ll have to remove the top cover and take a closer look at the motherboard to find out what’s going on. I you find corrosion, you’ll have to replace the motherboard.
April 3rd, 2009 at 11:51 am
prometheus,
Did you install SP1 for Vista?
April 3rd, 2009 at 11:46 am
Harry Linssen,
To me that sounds like a problem with the motherboard.
April 3rd, 2009 at 5:11 am
Hi, a beer was tipped over onto my laptop and I caught it very quickly – it was a small amount and I popped off some of the keys and wiped under them . It was near the shift key on the right lower side of the keyboard . For a while the screen wouldn’t show anything legible and then after a few days it worked fine until now . The screen is very jumpy and grainy but you can still read what’s on it . Could I get some circuit board cleaner and take the key board off perhaps ? Great tutorial and well photographed ! THanks !
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Hi,
On our aspire 5100 we installed 4 gb ram (2×2gb) about a year ago.
At that time it was running vista home premium (the version which was pre-installed).
Windows recognized 3.25Gb of ram.
We formatted, and reinstalled win vista (original, came with laptop), but now vista only recognizes 2.3gb of ram.
Re formatted again installed xp this time.
Only 2.25gb are recognized.
in bios all 4gb are recognized.(3.8 to be exact)
We tried to switch ram modules around, same thing, even replaced one with a 1gb module but still, windows only recognizes 2.25gb..What is the problem?
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:58 pm
I have the same problem as #52 – Vali:
A 5102WLMi Aspire notebook, and all 3 USB ports show OK in Device Manager, but can’t recognize any device plugged into them.
Tried Chipset Driver updates, BIOS Phlashing, several different OS clean installs – no go!
Googling shows quite a few people with this problem, but Acer doesn’t own up to it being a regular issue they should fix.
A PCI adapter serves to some extent, but bandwith doesn’t seem big enough for my Logitech webcam – it freezes after a few seconds, and stays frozen.
Help, somebody!
April 2nd, 2009 at 2:31 am
I’m trying to fix my Acer Aspire 5100 and I want to replace my RAM, Hard Drive and Video Card. My question is, what would be best? To replace my motherboard or to buy all of this?
Thanks Alot!
April 1st, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Dawna,
Most likely this failure is related to the inverter board which is located inside the display panel. I explain how to disassemble the display panel here:
How to remove LCD screen and replace inverter board in Acer Aspire 5100 laptop
Most likely it’s necessary to replace the inverter board.
April 1st, 2009 at 7:25 am
Thank you for your great site. I have an acer 5100 laptop. my son has it overseas and will be sending it home to me because yesterday the screen started flickering. today, he turned it on and the screen is very dim and he can hardly see it at all. The laptop is running fine except for the screen problem. I told him to send it home and I will look at it. If you could give me some ideas of what this could be and where I would look for the problem it would be greatly appreciated.
April 1st, 2009 at 4:21 am
Better luck this time–I burned the CD again and was able to run the Hitachi DFT. It indeed reported an error without further detail, and referred me to my drive mfr for diagnostic tools. Oddly, the Seagate Tools pkg showed no errors at all. At this point I’ve ordered recovery media from Acer. (And that’s another issue–why should I have to pay for recovery media when the partition on the drive is nonfunctional??)
In any case, thanks for your help!
March 31st, 2009 at 8:57 pm
David,
You can buy a PCMCIA card for your laptop with IEEE 1394 ports. You plug this card into the PC slot in your laptop and get 2 IEEE 1394 ports.
Google PCMCIA IEEE 1394
March 31st, 2009 at 2:13 am
Hi,
I have the Acer Aspire 5100 and have no problems with it. However, I want to transfer what has been filmed on a camcorder to the laptop but this model doesn’t have the 4-pin IEEE 1394 port. How do I go about this?
Thanks in anticipation for your help.
David
March 29th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Laptop Tech,
Thanks for the suggestion. No joy however. I created an ostensibly bootable CD using the ISO image for the drive fitness test I downloaded from Hitachi, and verified that my dvd drive is at the top of the boot sequence. However, I was unable to launch the DFT–the machine proceeds to boot from the hard drive. Hard to imagine what could cause this except some sort of windows-based virus. No problem booting using the Ubuntu CD.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:50 am
Jim Brokaw,
Maybe you have a faulty hard drive? Try testing the hard drive with Hitachi’s drive fitness test.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:46 am
John,
I don’t think so. I believe the video card is integrated into the motherboard and you cannot remove/replace/upgrade the card. You are stuck with what you have.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:45 am
Vida,
In most laptops the eithernet port is soldered to the motherboard. In order to find out what is wrong you’ll have to disassemble the laptop and take a closer look. Can you do it yourself? If not, I would take the laptop to a professional repair shop.
March 28th, 2009 at 4:31 am
Update: Using another machine in my household, I created a Ubuntu install disc, and ran a user session on my Acer Aspire 5100 from the DVD drive. After logging in as root, I copied the SATA drive to device null, expecting to encounter a slew of hardware errors. There were none! My best guess now is that I’m infected with a virus of some sort.
March 27th, 2009 at 5:20 am
FOOTNOTE:
Before attempting to restore the drive using the default recovery image, I backed up my crucial data using a SATA enclosure to another machine
March 27th, 2009 at 4:53 am
Short version: I think I’m screwed.
Longer version: Haven’t been able to boot my system for 18 hrs or so. In SAFE mode, the list of system files always halts at agpCPQ.sys. My bonehead guess would be that the next file is trashed. WORST: When I try to launch D2D recovery using ALT-F10 (having checked BIOS for D2D enabled), I get a brief msg indicating that the system is entering recovery mode, but then–the WINXP load logo, and things grind to a halt. Have attempted disconnecting/reinstalling the battery; the hard drive; the memory sticks.
Any thoughts???
March 25th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Thanks laptop tech for ur respond…
No, I cant…I couldnt get into the bios setup…all keys on board didn’t work anything…because i shut the power off at BIOS, now after booting, the windows error recovery appeared but still i couldnt choose any option…then it entered to startup repair command box…but still i couldnt do anything about it…
I dont know if the warranty is still valid or not…currently, i live in Indonesia but this laptop was sent from US…My brother bought this laptop around 1,5 years ago and he doesnt know where the book warranty is…
But, I got info that Acer has Acer Care Service in my city…maybe, i’d like to give them a call..
thx
March 25th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Hey,
I have a Acer Aspire 5100-5023 with a ATI Radeon Xpress 1100. Is it possible to upgrade it to something better? If it is any suggestions. Thank you.
John
March 25th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Hello,
I must say I was very happy to have found your site and to read some of the upgrades that I can do for my Acer!! Thank you
about a week ago I was plugged into the internet w a wired cnction, i tripped and the ethernet cable was ripped out of the port on the side of the comp. now if i try to cnct to the internet through the same port the green light by the port only lights up 10% of the time… if that. If the ethernet cable is plugged im no longer able to cnct to the int. Do you think this may be something i can fix myself like replacing the port?? or would I be wiser to take it into a comp prefessional?
Thanks for your time, Vida
March 24th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Bob,
Yep, that would be the first think to try if your laptop stopped booting. It works well and not only on Acer laptops.
What causes it? I don’t know.
March 24th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Dhanta,
Can you enter the BIOS setup menu and try using the keyboard in BIOS. Can you? If the keyboard doesn’t work in BIOS, most likely it’s a hardware related problem.
Is it still under warranty? If yes, definitely send it for repair to Acer.
March 24th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Disregard my last question. I did a search on “acer laptop will not power on” and found the answer.
Remove the power plug and battery. Hold down the power button for about 30 seconds then plug in the power cable. I pushed the power button again and the laptop turn on and booted up fine. Really weird problem. I wonder what causes it?
Bob
March 24th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
My Aspire 5100 just stop working tonight. I went to turn it on and nothing happened after I pushed the power button. When I plug in the power supply, the front light comes on, but the power button does not turn on the laptop. I unplugged it from the power supply and removed the battery for 5 minutes, but that did not fix it.
Do you think it is a bad power button? Kind of strange it just stopped all of a sudden.
Bob
March 24th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Thank you!
I have an Acer Aspire 3100 and these instructions helps me so much!
Good Job!!!