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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 28th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
when i remove keyboard i noticed that one side of the keyboard connector is disconnected while the other is still conected but i can still lock the keyboard together with the mother board. however it doesnt detect the keyboard or it make as if its holding some keys… any work around?
April 28th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
i replaced my laptop keyboard, however it doesnt work. i try to readjust the conection, then sometime i get my pc beeping as if a key is held, i open text pad it show 000000000000000 or sometimes ]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
whatever
April 28th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
i bought a 2nd hand laptop cheap because it had a problem with its keyboard. i ordered a keyboard in ebay and replaced the old keyboard.
but it doesnt work. i try to readjust the connection and sometimes i get stuff like
wd;t and thats it in a text pad or sometimes
00000000000000
or
]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
and it goes on..
what am i doing wrongly?
April 27th, 2009 at 9:44 am
Chris,
You don’t have to remove all these parts. In my guide I explain how to dissemble the laptop, not just clean the fan.
You can remove just the cooling fan and clean it with compressed air.
April 27th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Hey, i dont understand why you need to remove the hard drive, dvd, wireless card and all that just to clean out the fan. I took the panel off the back of my acer and used a knife to clean some dust inbetween the fan and the bronze part and my computer is running much faster now.
Can someone explain if i can clean it out more without removing all those other parts (dvd, wireless card, hard drive, ram, keyboard, etc.)
Thanks
April 25th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Hello, I am unable to test anything with my hard drive because my computer doesn’t ever get past the black screen. A little back ground, I put in my sons dell xp recovery by accident and overrode everything on acer 5100. I realized when I went to register the prI oduct. My computer worked fine, so I am pretty sure the hard drive works. I called acer to purchase recovery disk and when I received them they went through the process but when it said at the end, the loading all files it went to a blank screen and the fan still runs. I never get past that screen. I called acer paid for their support, they said dell xp is still sitting there and I tried downloading iso burner from another computer onto a cd to load to my acer but nothing happens it still does’t get past the blank screen…I have tried researching but haven’t found anything out there. Can I just purchase a new windows software that overrides everything and get a new product key?
April 24th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Hi.
Great site…really easy to understand instructions!
I have an Acer Aspire 5100 and the only problem with it is the CD/DVD drive. It doesn’t read any discs that I put in, but when I double click on the CD icon a box pops up that says the CD is a blank one and do I want to format it. It hasn’t been working for nearly a year now, and until I came across this site I didn’t expect to be able to get it fixed – warranty has run out and it will take too long and too much money. However, I am sure that I can follow your instructions to take the CD/DVD drive out. Now my two questions are…do you have instructions on how to install a new drive? And, do you recommend that I replace it myself? (Is it safe or will I likely break the whole computer? lol)
Thanks in advance for your help!
April 23rd, 2009 at 1:21 am
I have a used Acer Aspire 5100, every now and then, it either automatically shutsdown or the screen goes blue with a message saying: “Checking Memory Dump Files”.
What is the problem and what should I do?
Thanks!
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:17 pm
I gotta say I love this acer 5515 its a great laptop for the money. I would like to upgrade my acer’s wireless card to a wireless N, is this possible and if so where or what site could I go to to get a N card to install in my acer? I have wireless N at my home now and I would just love to experience 300mbps. Any help lemme know?
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:34 am
I have an Acer Aspire 8920G on wich I managed to spill beer right into the keyboard, some keys arent working after that, might be a minor cleaning job or a replacement of Keyboard, either way I really need to know how 2 properly dissasemble/remove keyboard without causing any damage
April 19th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Angie,
So it took you hours to boot to the desktop? There could be a problem with the hard drive.
Access the hard drive, find out who made it and visit the manufacturer’s website. Download the hard drive diagnostics utility and test the drive. If it fails, you’ll have to replace the hard drive.
If you cannot find diagnostics utility, try Hitachi’s drive fitness test, I linked to it in Useful Links on the right side. Hitachi’s DFT works with many different drives.
April 19th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
JefFLH,
Yes, your problem could be related to the hard drive.
Also, it’s possible you have a problem with memory. Before you purchase a new hard drive, run memory test. You can use Memtest86+.
If you don’t want to test the memory, you can try removing memory modules one by one and run the restore with only one memory module installed. If everything works fine with one of the modules installed, most likely the second one is defective and has to be replaced.
Yes, you can do that. The restore disc doesn’t requires the original drive to be installed. You can install a compatible drive and run the restore. It will reimage the drive back to factory defaults.
April 19th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
josie millington,
First of all, I would suggest testing laptop memory and hard drive. You can run Memtest86+ and test RAM.
By the way, if you have two memory modules installed, try removing them one by one and test the laptop with each memory module separately. If the laptop works fine with one of them, but hangs when another one is installed, the second module is bad.
If the laptop hangs with each module, apparently your problem is not related to memory.
Run diagnostics on the hard drive. Remove the hard drive and find out who made it. After that visit the manufacturer’s website and download the hard drive test. Test the hard drive.
April 18th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Hello Laptop Tech,
Many thanks for the tech support you offer. I purchased Acer 5100 in Nov 2006 and it was opened last week for the first time to upgrade RAM from 512 MB to 2 GB. It is working fine. Yesterday I was surprised to see a small dipression, a centimeter wide, on the panel caused just below the function key. It appears that the panel has melted from inside and I think it due to over heating. I am worried about the safety of my system. I have cleaned the fan and the ventilation using a vacuum cleaner. Should I attempt to clean the heat sink. Would you recommend cooling pad to take away excess heat? Please suggest.
April 14th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
I think mine was doing the same as Jeff’s above #253 before I put in the recovery disk.
April 14th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Hello, I have an Acer Aspire 5100 I’ve only had it for a little over a year and I guess it got a virus and shut down and it had black screen with words saying somehting about scan. My son was using it at that point so not sure. I tried to shut down and it was slow it took hours to go to window screen. I called acer but the restore didn’t work. I thought I had a recovery disk stuck it in to override and it worked fine but color looked different. Come to find out it was sons Dell XP because the key code wouldn’t work. I called Acer to pay for a recovery disk, they sent it and it was loading everything went through like 45 minutes and then said it was writing the files and finishing and then black screen. Why did it work with the Dell XP but not teh original recovery disk? What can I do now?
April 13th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
I forgot to mention, I tried using the restore disks and it quit when I believe it was trying to write to the hard drive and stated “Restore Failed”, Reason 0xa000000e.
Jeff
April 13th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
I think my hard drive is toast on my Acer Aspire 5100. It won’t boot, comes up with a menu recommending “Launch Startup Repair” or “Start Windows Normally”. Neither seems to do the trick. The hard disk light comes on for awhile, then goes our. If I launch Startup Repair, it flashes an unreadable (very quick) blue screen, then restarts all over. Starting Windows normally just doesn’t go either. My question is, does it sound like the hard drive? If so , can I replace it with a comparable SATA drive and use my factory rrestore disks to make everything good again? Thank you,
Jeff
April 13th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Great site very helpful. having terrible problems with my daughters acer aspire 5100, keeps hanging soon after start up, cant do anything with computer except turn it off, recently reinstalled xp, but this was a problem prior to this also cleaned out fan ,very dusty
thanks for your help
April 12th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Doris,
Try upgrading your Vista to SP1. Make sure the laptop has the latest BIOS installed. Update the BIOS if needed.
Check out other downloads available for your laptop, maybe Acer issued some kind of update which improves the system performance.
Here’s an example. I had an HP Pavilion dv5000 notebook and the CPU speed never was reported correctly in the system properties. I tried everything to fix it but nothing worked. Finally, I fixed it by updating the BIOS to the latest available version.
April 12th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Ian Foster,
Sounds like bad connection somewhere on the LCD controller board. I really doubt that you can fix it at home. You’ll have to replace the LCD screen.
April 12th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Iain Foster,
You are correct. It sounds like the first Acer laptop has a problem with the motherboard. Fred assembly is working fine with the second Acer laptop, so Fred has no problem with LCD or inverter.
I guess you’ll have to replace the motherboard on the first Acer laptop.
April 12th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
hello mr tech first of all very very good quide.
here is my concern I have an aspire 5515 is very very close to the 5100 visually its almost the same thing but inside it came with a amd athlon single core 2650e clocked to 1.60 ghz 3 gig of ram vista 32 bit and a built in ati radeon x1200.
i’ve been researching and discover that my board uses a s1 socket and that the board and the version of the bios will support a turion x2 prossesor ive been looking to see if anybody has done this and theres some people that claim they swap the athlon for an athlon x2 but the original prosessor only uses about 15 watts and the one that tey claim to change was 55 watts soo i dont think thats true im looking at a turion x2 tl66 2.3 ghz running at 35 watts will this work and will the power supply handle the difference and will the temperature be ok thaks for looking and hope anybody has something to say to me thanks
April 10th, 2009 at 8:50 am
Hi, wonderful site!
I have an Acer Aspire 5100 running Vista Home Premium, 32bits, at 1.8ghz.
I recently had the RAM upgraded from 2gb to 4gb, replaced with identical product.
The new 4gb shows in BIOS and System Information but still only shows original 2gb on Task Manager Performance and system is not using the added memory. Acer wants to charge big money for a phone call because warranty has expired. Do you have any ideas on what might be happening or how to get the system to actually ‘use’ the added memory? Any help at this point would be much appreciated.
April 8th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Also, as regards to second acer original screen(coloured lines running across screen) until you squeeze in certain place(Top left corner of display). Im guessing some water got into it, or bad connection? I have seen diagrams to seperate sheets and clean the display. Just wondered which prob it was. thx again Iain
April 8th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Just to add to above. Both acer’s work fine and boot up normally. On first acer although screen is dim that is only problem, because you can just about make out what u doing on screen. So o/s working normally.
April 8th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
I’ll be as clear as I can. First Acer 3634 has dim screen.Works fine with external monitor. I got a second hand screen(whole display).We will call this Fred. I changed whole display, Just disconnected 2 wireless and mobo connection. I then connected up Fred to first Acer. The result is the same(dim screen). I have second Acer 3634. This has a screen with colours running vertically across screen in lines, but if you hold top corner of screen(squeeze)you get clear picture. So I replaced whole display with Fred, same procedure as above. Second Acer now works fine.No problems. So I can deduce that first Acer problem is not inverter or backlight because Fred works in second Acer. I haven’t gotten around to testing first Acer screen in second Acer. But from Fred I know screen is not problem. Any ideas?? any more info you need please ask. thx again Iain
April 7th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Carl,
You still can see the screen and it’s bright even though it has only horizontal lines, so it’s not related to the inverter.
You’ll have to test your laptop with an external monitor. If external video works fine, you have either bad LCD (most likely) or bad video cable (less likely).
April 7th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Iain Foster,
Did you replace just the LCD screen or you replaced the whole display assembly (with LCD screen, inverter, cables, etc…)?
April 7th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
I have a used acer aspire 5100, every now and then the screen either goes black or white with horizontal gray lines. I reseated the lcd connecter and still same thing.
Should i replace the lcd or is it a inverter issue?