Fixing a Computer by Disabling 2 USB Ports
I was in need of a USFF PC at my non-profit, ReCognition Circular. Almost as soon as the need arose, a local business donated one. "Happy days", I thought! Nope! It wasn't working, hence why they'd given it to us. It turned out one of the front USB ports was damaged; it's data lines and more importantly, it's 5V rail, was shorted to ground. I'd likely have damaged a circuit by trying to use the machine thus I either needed to replace the bad ports, remove them or disable them. I chose the third option.
I started by inspecting the machine. If the USB ports are damaged then there could easily have been other issues. Everything else looked good so I set about taking it apart. All that held it together were some clips and one screw in the back. I removed the screw, popped the clips and hinged the front off. Beneath the lid was a metal shield held down with 4 additional screws. I took those out and lifted the cover off. It was plain sailing so far. I was surprised (and pleased) to see an mSATA port. It meant I could remove the HDD and replace it with a more efficient drive whilst still having a slot for storage expansion should ever be needed. Plus, the computer would have better airflow and it would be quieter.
Once inside, I started removing bits of the front USB circuit. I ended up removing too much but I'll come back to that. I took out each of the 0 Ohm resistors, the 6.3V capacitor on the 5V rail, 2 coils and 2 black chips which I believe were resistor networks or USB negotiation chips. Something like that anyway. I had opted to just cut the capacitor out and not remove the board from the machine. This ended up being pointless as the board needed to come out to remove the hard drive.
As for actually removing the motherboard, it entailed taking out a few screws, the audio jacks and 4 silver standoffs which were doubling up as screws. It was held in place with a final small clip above the broken ports which, once cleared, meant I could lift it out. The HDD was screwed directly to the board in a move I theorise was a last choice by Acer. If the computer had come out a few years later, it could have used an SSD and they could have avoided the vibrations and heat generated by the HDD. Regardless, once the HDD was removed I put the motherboard back and screwed it back down.
Replacing the thermal paste and cleaning the dust out was trivial, as was re-seating the audio jacks, increasing the RAM and installing an mSATA SSD. All that was left was to reassemble the computer and install Linux or so I thought. Putting it back together was a breeze. A few improvements could be made to the design e.g. replacing the HDD with an SSD, making the CPU upgradeable, improving the cooling slightly, increasing airflow through the addition of some extra vents but it is overall a really nice machine. They left a SATA Slimline port on the board too. You could conceivably use a machine like this as a NAS if you were so inclined to mod it; I have an embedded motherboard from a Point of Sale system running my NAS at home!
Anyway, back to the repair. I hinged the front on, clicked the lid down and installed the rear screw. Success? The computer turned on. I was able to make some changes in the BIOS, boot Linux and start an install. It crashed. I re-started the installer. It didn't outright crash but it hung. Something was obviously wrong. Immediately, I thought back to the mod I'd done. Perhaps the capacitor I removed wasn't responsible just for the 2 USB ports I was looking to disable but other things too? With no better theory I opened up the machine again, pulled the board and replaced the cap. Luckily, I have scrapped loads of old machines thus I had one spare.
Once it had been put back together (again) the install went without a hitch and I was soon booting CachyOS (a Linux distro) from the internal SSD. The irony is that if I 'd just removed the motherboard in the first place and heated from beneath to take out the resistors, coils and other parts, the original capacitor could have stayed and I'd have saved time. Then again, how do you learn without making mistakes?
Pleased that everything now worked, I took it to ReCognition Circular and set it up with the help of one of our placement students (the person who will actually be using it). I asked him to bookmark the sites that he needed and to let me know if there were any issues. It has been in use for 2 weeks and is so far working without issue. The best part is that we were able to cram it in a corner with an F-tier 4:3 19" monitor, PS/2 mouse and keyboard (with the help of a £4 adapter) and an old laptop charger we had no use for. That's the reason why I like projects like this one so much; they allow you to put a bunch of e-waste to use. There's no reason why this computer and its peripherals won't serve us well for years to come.
Thank you for reading. As usual, the accompanying YouTube video is linked below:
(Repair Wins Blog - Post #6)
(June 2026)
