-: In this lesson,
I'm going to show you how to disassemble a laptop.
But before we do that,
I want to show you exactly how I have my work bench set up.
Now on my work bench, I have this antistatic mat
that you can see here that's shown in blue.
In addition to that,
I have a magnetic parts board over here.
This magnetic parts board will allow me
to be able to take out the pieces from my laptop,
such as the different screws,
put them into one of those locations, and label them
so I don't lose track of where the screws came from.
Oftentimes when you're disassembling a mobile device
or a laptop, a lot of the screws look the same
or look very close to each other.
And so you may be starting to try to put the wrong screw
in the wrong place when you reassemble the laptop.
If you use a screw that's a little bit longer
than the one you were supposed to,
you can actually crack the underlying circuit board
such as the motherboard or other devices
inside of the laptop.
So it's important to always put the right screw back
into the right hole.
Now, before we get started in this section of the course
of our demonstrations, I want to show you
the two different laptops that we're going to use.
The first one I have is this one, which is a Dell computer.
Now this is a really old Dell.
This is about a 8 to 10-year-old model,
but it makes a great example
of what a typical corporate office laptop might look like.
When you're dealing with a corporate office laptop,
you'll notice they tend to be thicker and bulkier
but in addition to that, they have easy access panels
for you to reach and be able
to upgrade different components.
On the underside of this laptop,
you'll see a couple of key areas
that I want to point out.
First, we have the docking station port right here.
This allows this laptop to be placed
into a docking station and using this proprietary connector,
it will then connect into the docking station
and provide you with lots of different features
and functions through that docking station
for your end user to use.
In addition to that, we also have this plastic cover,
which is used to hide the wifi card
or the cellular card on this particular model.
In here, you'll find a mini PCIe slot
that you can use to put in an additional expansion card
for this model.
In addition to that, we also have this bay
and this is actually the battery bay.
On this model, they made it really easy
to get to your battery.
To be able to remove the battery,
simply push the thumb locks to the side
and push the battery cover forward.
That will release it,
and then you can pull out that battery
and you can see the battery and its connector
are all part of that door.
To replace this battery,
I would simply buy a replacement for this
and I would then be able to put it right back in,
sliding it into place, and pushing it until it clicks
to lock it back in place.
In addition to that, this particular model
has a couple of other unique features
that I want to demonstrate.
Here on the side, you'll see there is this slot on the side
known as a smart card reader.
Using this reader, you can insert a plastic card
that looks like an ID card that has an embedded microchip
and this can be used for identification and authentication
when logging into the machine.
For example, I used to work for a government organization
and every day, I would take my ID card,
slide it into this slot
and be able to log into my computer using that
and a pin number that was associated with that card.
This uniquely identified me to the system
and used multifactor authentication
because it was something I had, this card,
and something I knew, my pin number.
Now, in addition to that,
you'll also see there's an empty bay here on the side.
Now, this empty bay is actually where the hard drive goes
on this model.
Now on this model, just like the battery is removable,
you can also remove the hard drive.
And this, again, is something that's used
in higher security environments.
So when they were done using this laptop
and they wanted to sell it off for parts,
they actually took that hard drive and destroyed it
to make sure none of their data was being taken
by somebody who bought the laptop.
And therefore, the rest of this laptop could be repurposed
if you simply bought a new hard drive
and put it into that bay.
This hard drive was put into a plastic caddy
that locked it into place.
And the hard drive itself used a SATA connection
for both data and power
and it used a 2.5 millimeter form factor.
The next thing I want to point out
is this wireless on/off switch.
Right now, it's set to the off position.
And if I flip it this way, it will allow us
to turn that radio on for the wireless card.
Now, the benefit of having a physical switch like this
is you can be certain that that wifi card
has been powered off.
Again, in business and enterprise units,
you'll often see a dedicated switch like this
to turn on or off that particular wireless card.
Keep this in mind if you're doing troubleshooting
and you can't figure out why the wireless network
isn't working on a particular laptop.
There may be a hardware switch associated with it.
Now, if we flip the laptop over to the other side,
you'll see that we have a DVD-ROM here.
Now, if we didn't need a DVD-ROM,
we can actually take that out and replace it
with something else like a secondary hard disk
or an old-school floppy disk drive
or even just a blank plate
to reduce weight and power consumption.
To do that on this model,
simply push this button on the side, grab it and pull,
and the entire unit comes out.
This unit does use a proprietary connection
that you could see here on the back
that is specific to this Dell model.
And so you have to pick up a component
that works with this particular make
and model of Dell laptop
to be able to change out this DVD drive for anything else.
Now, when you put this back in,
you'll simply slide it into place, push it into place,
and then push the button down to relock it into place.
Now, the last thing I want to show you is the keyboard
and the layout on this particular laptop.
To do this, I'm going to lay it flat here on my desk.
Now, you'll notice we have a standard keyboard
with all of the keys you would expect
but we don't have a dedicated number pad.
Instead we have small blue numbers such as 1, 2, 3
being on the J, K, L keys.
To be able to use those numbers,
you will simply turn on the NumLock key here
and then these letters will no longer work
and the numbers will be used instead.
If you're trying to enter something onto your screen
and you're seeing a lot of numbers showing up
instead of letters, it is possible
that your NumLock has been enabled.
So to disable it, simply press the NumLock key,
and that will turn off that feature
and bring it back to a standard keyboard.
In addition to that,
this laptop does have two different ways
to control the pointer on your screen.
The first is the more common one that you see these days,
which is known as a touchpad or trackpad.
You could see that down here.
On this particular touchpad or trackpad,
you'll notice it's small in nature,
about two inches wide by 1 1/2 inches tall.
And it has two buttons, the left-click
and the right-click for the mouse.
As you're operating it,
you'll simply move your finger around
to where you need to go
and then left-click or right-click as appropriate
for your particular operating system.
Now, a lot of modern laptops have actually removed
that left and right button from the trackpad.
And instead they've integrated that
into the trackpad itself.
This allows you to have a larger trackpad or touchpad
but you don't have those dedicated keys.
On those trackpads, they'll use one of two methods
to simulate these buttons.
Either they'll have you click with one finger
to be able to do a left-click
or two fingers to do a right-click
or they'll use the bottom left side as the left-click
and the bottom right side as the right-click.
This will depend on your make and model of laptop
so check your documentation to figure out
which one it is for yours.
Now, the next laptop I want to show you
is what's known as a Lenovo Y540.
This is a more modern laptop being only about two years old.
This is actually my kids' laptop before they broke it.
So you're going to see some stickers
and things on it, but that's okay.
We can still see the purposes of it.
This laptop is designed as a gaming laptop.
They sell it with a higher processor,
a bigger fan, and it uses up more power.
Because of this, you'll see there's not a lot
of easily accessible components
like a hard drive, mini PCIe slot,
or the battery that can simply be removed.
And instead we'll have to fully disassemble this laptop
to get to the different components.
Now, in this laptop,
you'll notice the back is fairly smooth.
We don't see a lot of ports or a docking station port
or anything like that.
Instead, we just see two large areas,
which are actually vent outputs for the fans.
Again, this was designed as a gaming laptop
and therefore, it produces a lot more heat
than a regular laptop would.
Right above these, you'll see there's these rubber feet.
And these are actually sticking up
about 1/4 inch off the ground.
This will keep the fans from blowing directly on your desk
and giving a little bit of space
between the bottom of the laptop
and the desktop to be able to give more room for cooling.
As we look at the backside of this,
we'll see our port cluster on the back of this laptop,
including a USB-C connection,
a display port connection, a USB Type-A connection,
an HDMI connection, an RJ45 network connection,
a power connector that's specific to this laptop,
and a Kensington lock or case slot connector.
Also on this laptop, you'll notice on both sides,
we do have a grate that allows more air
to be pushed out of this laptop,
again, trying to help cool it down.
The next area we have is going to be here at the top
and you'll see there is another USB Type-A connector.
And if we go around all the way to the other side,
we can see we have yet another USB Type-A connector,
as well as a 1/8 inch or 3.5 millimeter audio jack.
Now, let me go ahead and open this up
so you can see the inside and what the trackpad looks like.
Now that we have the laptop open,
you can see that this uses a full style keyboard.
Unlike the previous one that we saw
which had a compact keyboard,
where we had to share number keys and letters,
this one has a dedicated number keypad over to the right.
In addition to that, it also has a dedicated setup
for the arrow keys, giving you the up, down,
left, and right.
And again, this was designed as a gaming laptop
so they want to build up easy access to these arrow keys
so you could play your games a lot more efficiently.
In addition to that,
you'll notice we have the trackpad at the bottom.
Now at the trackpad at the bottom,
you'll notice there is no buttons
but there is a small little dividing line right here
that shows me that this will be my left-click
and this would be my right-click.
Additionally, this laptop does support single click for left
or dual click for right.
And you'll notice we have have a much larger trackpad
on this model because we eliminated the physical buttons
that were sitting there underneath the other one.
Now, in addition to that,
we do have our power button here at the top.
And then we do have function keys going across the top.
And each of these functions has two purposes.
The first function is the function key itself,
such as F1, F2, F3, or F4 inside of Windows.
But in addition to that,
you'll also see a little symbol underneath it.
For instance, this F1 key also serves as the mute key.
F2 is the volume decrease.
F3 is the volume increase.
F4 is to mute your microphone, and things like that.
Now, in addition to that, this keyboard
does have a couple of function keys
that have special meanings
that would be important for us to know
as a technician during troubleshooting.
For example, if you're having trouble seeing something
on your screen or on an external display,
you need to check the F7 key.
This F7 key controls whether or not you're going
to an internal display or an external display
based on pressing that key.
If you're having trouble being able
to mirror your laptop's image
into an external display over HDMI or display port,
you do want to check that particular key.
In addition to that, we also have airplane mode on F8.
You'll notice here there's a little symbol for the airplane.
And again, if you want to be able
to use any of these special functions,
you'll simply press the Fn key at the bottom of the button
and then press the key such as F8
to turn airplane mode on or off.
All right, now that we've gotten that quick introduction
to two different laptops
to see all their different features,
we are going to open up this laptop.
Now to be able to do this,
you'll notice there are lots of screw holes all around it,
including here on the edges,
as well as some here in the middle section.
And so as you work on your laptop and disassemble it,
you're going to make sure you keep track of all the parts.
You're going to use your plastic pry bar
to get the plastic casing off,
making sure to loosen those retaining clips
and be able to get into the actual device itself.
Now, next, we want to start taking out the different screws,
going all around the case,
but we do want to document exactly where those screws were.
So I'm going to start with this top left corner.
So I'm going to go ahead and put my screwdriver in there,
and simply unscrew it.
I'm going to go ahead and put that on my board here.
And I'm going to say top left.
Now I'm going to continue doing this
all the way around the laptop.
And when I'm done, I will show you all the parts
on the board, as well as all the screws having been removed
before we remove the case.
Okay, so now that we've gotten all of the screws
out of this laptop, I've gone around the edge
and through the center and placed them onto my mat,
where I've been able to label each one.
You can notice as you look at these
that they are all of a different size.
It looks like the first seven are about the same size.
And then we have some that are the same size here
towards the bottom, but they do vary
and so you want to make sure you don't mix them up
because some may look the same,
but they might be off by just a little bit.
So now to open up this laptop,
we're going to use our pry tool,
which is simply a little piece of plastic
that we can wedge in there between the two pieces
and open it up by doing that.
Inside of this laptop beyond those screws,
there's also little plastic retaining clips.
And so by using this little pry tool,
we can break apart those retaining clips
and allow us to get into the laptop.
So there we go, going around the edge,
continuing around.
You can hear that little clip,
which is the retaining pins letting go.
And I'm going to do that all the way around this laptop.
There we go.
And I'll pull that off to the side.
Now, let me go ahead and straighten this up
a little bit better for you.
And now that we're going to be working
with the inside of this laptop,
we do want to make sure we have our ESD strap on.
You also notice I have an ESD mat
that my laptop is sitting on currently
to make sure it's protected from electrostatic shock.
Now that we have the laptop properly disassembled,
we're going to focus on replacing different components
inside of it, including the battery,
the keyboard, the memory, the storage,
the expansion cards and things like that.
But we'll save those for each in their own video.