Book on Fixing my Laptop: Need one.

Factual Questions
1

I need a book on fixing laptops. I don’t know a lot about computer hardware; just what a computer consists of, cpu, fan, monitor, screen, and motherboard. I know minimal about electronics-shorts, circuits…
So, I need a book that will tell me how to fix my laptop.
Wait a minute: It doesn’t have to be a book; can be a dvd, website, etc…
Can anybody here tell me of one?

Thanks,
hh

2

What is wrong with your laptop? Laptops aren’t generally user-servicable, even as much as desktops are. You can replace the HDD, optical drive, RAM, and sometimes the video card, but everything else is one integrated unit that should probably be sent to the pros.

3

I’m not aware of any general “how to fix laptop” books. Each laptop model is essentially unique. However, laptop manufacturers often have service manuals for their laptops. These won’t necessarily be available to the public, since they’re mostly meant as a reference for their own repair technicians. Still, some manufacturers provide this sort of information openly (Dell and Lenovo are both quite good here), and there’s a good chance you can acquire a copy of the service manual even if it hasn’t officially released to the public.

What is the brand and model of your particular laptop?

4

Well, I dropped it, and the battery isn’t recharging. I don’t know if I broke the battery pack or the connection from the cord to the battery.
I have since decided never to take anything to a computer repairman (got burned recently) so I am going to have to do something myself, or use it in a limited capacity.
It is an hp mini 210-1091nr.

Thanks,
hh

5

The laptop still works when it’s connected to AC power, correct?

Have you tried removing and reinstalling the battery?

6

See if the download you need is here.

7

Laptops are designed to be small. This makes them a royal pain to work with when you need to do some sort of electronics type repair, like re-soldering a connector or that sort of thing. If taking the battery out and re-installing it doesn’t work, chances are you will need to do some sort of soldering type repair, and this is not something that I would recommend doing for someone with little to no electronic experience.

If you are really lucky, you may have a bent contact in the battery compartment, or perhaps the protective circuit inside the battery broke and you can fix this just by buying a new battery. You absolutely do not want to take the battery apart to repair this circuit if it is what broke. Lithium ion batteries tend to do nasty things like overheat and explode if their protective circuit isn’t 100 percent right.

I’m generally all for people learning to do things themselves, but if re-installing and/or replacing the battery doesn’t work, the chances of someone with little to no electronics experience successfully repairing this laptop is fairly small, IMHO.

8

The HP mini units are not all that robust chassis wise. It’s likely you fractured the MB and the charging circuit trace or some related sub component of the charging system is damaged. It might be the battery, but batteries are hard to damage with just a drop and unless the unit fell on the battery I’d bet on the MB. Fixing a busted circuit board trace isn’t really a job that most people can do unless the break is at a physical point like a connector and even then it’s’ difficult.

Your best bet is to find a buddy with the same general class of machine and see if their battery charges in your machine. Failing that, in your position I’d just keep checking eBay for a identical unit being sold for parts with a functioning MB.

Your machine was 250 new when discontinued so I can understand your reluctance to dump more into it than it is worth. What I would do in your position is sell it "as is" on ebay for around 100 +/- or so and use that cash toward a new netbook.

9

Don’t forget YouTube, when you are having computer questions. I found a lot of useful tutorials made by people, especially for netbooks and laptops

10

Yes, it still works when connected. I have tried removing and installing the battery; no better. Nothing looks broken…

Thanks, everyone,
hh

11

If you are handy with a DC multi-tester and have access to the battery compartment it occurred to me (if you have probes small enough to make contact) that you could simply use the multi-tester on the battery charging contacts in the battery bay and see if they are getting DC voltage. At least this would answer the “battery or netbook” question re where the charging fault lies.

12

The Dell service manuals are quite good for “how do I take this apart and put it back together?”, but not as good for “how do I find out what’s wrong?”

That’s because the service manuals available to customers on the Dell web site aren’t the ones that Dell techs use. As an example, I just looked at the “real” service manual for the Studio 153x series of laptops and it is 451 pages long when exported to PDF (it is actually a huge HTML document). The DCSE portal is here, but you need to work for a Dell Service Partner to get in.