Fixing a Laptop from the Scrap Heap - So Many Issues
I run a non-profit called ReCognition Circular. It exists to promote digital inclusion, reduce e-waste, train people how to repair electronics and to donate digital devices, free of charge, to people who need them, via the Birmingham Device Bank. We take end of life or simply unwanted or faulty laptops (and occasionally desktops, monitors, etc.) from businesses which no longer need them. They're then repaired and refurbished or scrapped and used for training.
One of the ways we fund our work is through the sale of some of the repaired laptops. That brings us on to the subject of this blog, a machine I deemed scrap. It was donated by a local I.T. business, it had a number of faults and it was practiced on by a student of ours during a repair course. I decided to take it home for a project; our waste corner was nearing critical mass as not everything is able to be repaired or refurbished. Sometimes things are simply no longer in demand and repairing them would cause us to lose money as there's no market for them, hence the waste pile. We have to pay to have said waste collected so why not see about reducing it?
Once identifying asset labels had been removed, I removed the bottom cover and had a look. There was no RAM, Wi-Fi card, charging port, fan, SSD, DVD drive or battery. All the rubber feet on the bottom were missing too. Before spending any money, I wanted to see if the motherboard worked. I could have injected 19V with a bench power supply but I instead opted to solder a test charging port right to the connector on the motherboard. The laptop came straight to life with a few (to be expected) BIOS errors. Great! It transpired the screen was faulty but we have plenty of spares from other junk machines.
Now, the project was officially on. I took to eBay to find a charging port and a fan. I paid just over £8 for them both. Fixing machines like this is a nice way to support small businesses and private individuals. Most of the parts sellers are either people with a spare machine they've parted out to make money or 2 directors in a small office doing the same thing on a larger scale. I used to do the same thing in my childhood bedroom. Not much has changed I suppose.
The 2 parts arrived so I installed them. I had an 8GB stick of RAM spare and a number of Wi-Fi cards of which I fitted one. This laptop is unusual in that the fan isn't held down directly with any screws. Instead, the bottom cover holds it down once installed. All the cables, (the antennas, display cable, charging port), route along the left screen hinge. I got them in place, installed the bottom cover and screwed it down. Why screw the cover on a machine which clearly needs more work I hear you ask? Because the hinges need to be secured down fully or you risk damaging the machine.
I have a USB drive with Ventoy, a tool which allows you to put multiple bootable ISOs on one disk. Unlike the computer I use to write these blogs, this laptop isn't ancient thus I was able to plug it in and boot Linux. CachyOS was destined for install so I also used it for testing. I needed to see if the speakers, keyboard, Wi-Fi and webcam were working. Was the laptop prone to crashing due to memory errors, did the new fan work, etc.
https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html
Happily, it booted quickly and without issue. With an open notepad I typed out "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". It's a sentence that uses every letter in the English alphabet. So far so good. I typed out the numbers, symbols and tested the other keys too. No issues. I then tested Backspace. It didn't work. Literally the last key I tested didn't work. Seriously? It couldn't have been the Pause Break key or Scroll Lock or even Page Down or something not essential could it? Clearly, the laptop would need a new keyboard. The Wi-Fi, speakers and other functions were at least fine. I grumbled a bit and then ordered a generic keyboard for £14.
Whilst waiting for the delivery, I took a spare 2nd hand screen home. It was grimey but otherwise fine. Removing the screen housing wasn't a difficult process. Most repairs aren't; it was just tedious. Still, I've got a nice toolkit and plenty of experience so I jumped in. The idea is that you remove the bottom cover, then the battery (make sure the charger is unplugged too). You then unplug the display cable, antennas and anything else which runs over the hinges. You remove the screws securing both hinges in place and store them separately. Then you can use a metal tool to manually open the hinges. Once they're open you can slide the main body of the laptop away from the screen. Simple!
You can remove the screen bezel and screen whilst everything is still attached to the laptop but in doing so you risk breaking the fragile plastic and brass standoffs which hold the hinges down - it's better to do the job properly. I removed the display bezel, a task which is made easy when the screen is faulty, by prying up on it and popping the clips until it came off. My model is one of the last ones where the screen is held on with screws. In newer machines, they use double-sided tape that you have to slowly pull out. Really! I suppose the manufacturers decided that a tiny cost saving per laptop is worth the damage to their brands, the increased e-waste and tougher warranty repairs...
In my case, taking the old screen out and installing a new one was a breeze. Make sure the connector is fully seated as you can break the new screen or the laptops' motherboard if it isn't. I just had to put the 4 screws back, seat the screen under the hinges and I was away. Screwing it back to the main body was simple too. Running the cables catches people out sometimes so if you're doing a repair yourself, take plenty of high-quality photos of the device as you're dismantling it. You can easily refer back to them later.
I had to fix the screen and leave the housing on a shelf for a few days. I couldn't put the assembly back in the laptop until the new keyboard was in place. It arrived and was missing the "Esc" key. It wasn't loose in the package. It just wasn’t there. I got lucky and was able to remove the one from the broken keyboard and install it but that doesn't usually work. Still, it's worth keeping the old keyboard until you've had a chance to inspect the new one. Now, actually removing the old keyboard was another feat in itself.
Everything has to come out of the laptop and be stored somewhere safe. I had a mountain of parts, bags of screws, IO boards and so on. For older machines, even cheap ones, it was as simple as removing 3 screws, popping some clips and lifting the keyboard out. No longer. Even I struggled. I run an electronics repair business. In my opinion the job is needlessly complex and designed to thwart 3rd party repair or, at the very least, make it prohibitevly expensive. The TL;DR is that you take practically every screw, board, speaker and so on out of the machine. You end up left with just the palmrest with its faulty keyboard, enshrined by a metal frame, held down with blobs of melted plastic.
You have to remove every melted plastic post by painstakingly cutting them with a razor blade or by using a metal prying tool with a fine end to snap them off. I usually end up with some scuffs on my hands. The floor ends up covered in little plastic pieces. They even end up on your clothes and a once clean desk is left needing to be wiped down. You can't be impatient and wrench up on the plastic as you may end up cracking the palmrest or bending the metal frame. The process takes 15 to 20 minutes so put some music on and take it slowly. Once out, clean the frame with a brush so there isn't anything to keep the new keyboard from sitting flat. My preferred adhesive is T7000. You can use B7000 but it's weaker. Please don't use super glue. Trust me, it doesn't work...
The palmrest has to be flat but raised off of the desk (the keyboard won't be able to rest in the frame otherwise). In the past I achieved this with 2 bamboo toothbrushes, one under each side. You can do something similar in a pinch. I'm lucky enough to have 2 Hakko Omnivices (though they did cost £110!) so I was able to use those instead. I also situated some clean yoghurt pots around the touchpad area so it didn't sag. The premise is that you set the keyboard in the frame and put a blob of T7000 where each of the posts would have been. Once that's done, use whatever you have to hand to keep the keyboard flat in the frame. I used a collection of batteries, mini clamps, a microwave capacitor (yep) and so on.
They say to leave the adhesive for 24-48 hours so it can set. In my experience, if you glue the keyboard at about noon you can remove the clamps and covers to glue the frame at midnight so that by noon the next day it is set enough you can put the laptop back together. That's what I did. The re-assembly isn't particularly interesting, especially if you've seen it done a few times so I'll skip past it. What I will say is that I don't rely on photos. I put all the boards in a pile and all the screws in just a few pots as space is limited so I need to use it as best I can. It took quite a while to re-assemble the machine as a result; I got there in the end! During the re-assembly, I installed the SSD. It was an M.2 2260 drive which I installed in the M.2 2280 caddy by using a spare piece of circuit board and a coupler pilfered from elsewhere.
Unsurprisingly, the "scrap", "waste of time" laptop was taking longer than expected. A smart person would have spent £10 on a DVD drive and been done with it. In Fusion 360, on another computer, I created a 3D model of the bezel. The modelling process wasn't showing in the video as A, I don't have a good way of recording it and B: my modelling skills are very limited so I'm not the best person to learn from. I know enough to get by but it takes my way longer than it would take a more skilled person. Staggeringly, the first print fit. It's only a simple part but that rarely happens.
As for the main body of the DVD drive, I had one I'd designed years ago so it was just a case of slicing it in Cura and 3D printing it. I wasted time drilling 2 small holes in the bottom of the laptop (as they ended up not being used) but the concept was novel and I was pleased I'd come up with it. Projects like these always end up teaching you a few things and whilst you don't make money from them, the skills you learn make you money down the line (in theory). All I had to do was superglue the new bezel on and leave it in a corner to set. "Glue" and "laptop repair" shouldn't be in the same sentence but in this case...
Once everything was set, the final step was to install the battery and test it. Installation was a 30 second job as it was designed to be end-user replaceable. Why not the keyboard and speakers too? Why not a removable cover for the RAM and SSD also? Most parts in this machine are removable but is there much point if you need an expensive tool kit and lots of expertise or a bunch of guides to help you?
I booted Linux and ran a command: "upower -i /path/to/device"" which revealed the capacity to be 100%. Whether the manufacturer modified the firmware in any way I don't know but it held a good charge and only cost £14 so I'm happy with it. We already knew the webcam, speakers and Wi-Fi worked but I tested them again quickly. All was well. Most importantly, the new keyboard worked without issue. Thank goodness. If it hadn't worked, I'd have wasted a lot of time indeed!
The accompanying video concluded before I installed the rubber feet. As of writing, the replacements are on the way. Once fitted, the machine will be complete. For the £43.07 spent on it, it's a great little machine. It would have cost considerably more had we not had a screen, RAM, SSD, Wi-Fi card and BIOS battery spare but that’s the point. We fixed it because part of our mission is to reduce e-waste. The laptop may be rough around the edges; it's obvious it has been tinkered with but it will prove useful to someone as the plan is to donate it to the Birmingham Device Bank so that someone can use it.
https://birminghamdevicebank.org/
Thank you for reading. As usual, the accompanying YouTube video is linked below:
(Repair Wins Blog - Post #5)
(June 2026)
