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Laptop Repair Videos, Podcasts & Tips

Anyone that has worked in the Computer Repair field will know that laptops are a very different animal than your average desktop PC.  Although they share a lot of similar concepts, in terms of hardware, repairing them is a whole different art.  This article includes a lot of laptop specific tips that I used including laptop repair videos.

When I started in computer repair, it was laptops that I was primarily interested in.  It was more of a niche market that I thought would be good to get into.  So I bought a few broken/spares/repairs laptops off ebay to practice taking them apart, and see what was inside.

You very quickly learn that although the general concept of taking them apart tends to be quite similar, each model of laptop can have it’s own problems.  Tiny screws hidden under rubber bumpers, cables that have to be fed through a hole in the motherboard, the list goes on.. Continue reading

How to Reflow a Laptop Motherboard

This article describes a reflow procedure that can be performed at home in a conventional household oven for a common laptop motherboard repair of the broken graphics chip.

What is a Reflow?

The term ‘reflow’ describes a process of briefly melting (reflowing) the solder on an electrical circuit board, in this case a laptop motherboard.

Why would you perform a Reflow on a laptop motherboard?

The solder used in laptop motherboards tends to degrade over time, becoming brittle and weak. It can change from being a solid block of solder into more of a honeycomb structure. This weaker solder joint can fracture causing tiny broken connections in the circuit, invisible to the naked eye. The idea behind performing a reflow is that it melts the solder, allowing it to form a solid block again and joining up the electrical circuit. Continue reading

Customer wants me to fit a backlight into their laptop LCD

I don’t turn away much repair work, but I turned down a job today. Here’s the story.

A customer phoned up and said his backlight had failed. He had ordered a new one and had started taking his laptop apart to replace it. But he soon got out of his depth, didn’t want to risk breaking the delicate backlight and wanted me to finish the job for him. Continue reading

Firefox not responding

We had a returning customer come into the shop a few days ago. Everything was working fine on his computer apart from Firefox.

His operating system was Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit.

When he loaded up Firefox, his homepage appeared straight away. But any time he would click on one of the menus, or any of his favourites on his favourites bar, Firefox would go Not Responding, the little Windows 7 ‘waiting’ circle would appear and spin round, and the Firefox window would change to that opaque white colour that tells you Windows 7 is struggling with something. Continue reading