I officially hate fixing laptops...

[AmEv]

My Toshiba laptop is one of the easiest laptops I've ever serviced.

[Cale_Hagan]

I love working on laptops!

Lol.. I'm all bass-ackwards I guess. I like the challenge of the small components and tight clearances. Plus, now that I'm an Apple only household (You heard it here first), it's all laptop components in the iMac and Mini anyways.

There are a couple good tricks to remember.

1. Take a sheet of paper or piece of cardboard, and rough sketch the laptop on it. Then just punch the screws into the paper/cardboard in the approximate location of where it came from. Make a new sheet for each layer (ie: one for case, one for mobo, one for top tray, etc)

2. Take your time, take pictures if necessary. This is especially good to do if you are doing a teardown to repair/replace something. You might end up having to leave it for awhile, and if you dont remember how to put it back together.. *yikes*.

3. Most laptops use pretty standard screws; fine threads, phillips heads, and usually only 2 diff lengths. You can salvage from just about any laptop (except Macbooks, due to small torx heads, security torx, and tri-wing heads..grrr).

4. Broken power jacks arent that hard to fix, even if the retaining pieces are broken. Test to make sure it works (while still disassembled, and hot glue that sucker into place. Add reinforcements and extra glue as needed.

1. Take a sheet of paper or piece of cardboard, and rough sketch the laptop on it. Then just punch the screws into the paper/cardboard in the approximate location of where it came from. Make a new sheet for each layer (ie: one for case, one for mobo, one for top tray, etc)
i always tape them down on paper, and write a note under it for my own use, as well.

[TLHarrell]

If it's a single session in and out repair, I don't bother with taping screws down. I do arrange parts and assemblies in order of removal, with their screws beside them. I have plenty of work space. Ifixt.com, YouTube are both good places to look for disassembly info. I have found Dell to be really easy. Screws are labeled on the casing. Lenovo is good as the repair manuals are well written. HPs are a serious pain in the butt. Lots of hidden things to find before you can open the case.

[AmEv]

HPs are a serious pain in the butt. Lots of hidden things to find before you can open the case.

[Luke122]

I'll be doing a teardown/reflow/rebuild of a 24" C2D Imac next week.. I should document it..

[Technochicken]

I've done repairs on a bunch of intel imacs, and they are quite a pain, especially the newer ones where you have to use suction cups to remove the cover glass from the screen in order to acces the screws holding it together. A couple days ago I fixed one that had a short in the optical drive cable, which made the thing spew smoke every time you turned it on.