So I tried to unscrew a component - *not *the battery, apparently, but something that looks kind of like a circuit board; a sizable rectangular pack. Strangely, when I tried to screw it back into place, it wouldn’t go in fully, but instead is now kind of bent/curved/distended. The laptop still runs just fine even with a component pack not fully in place…how is this something the laptop doesn’t really need? (FWIW, it’s a Toshiba Qosmio laptop.) And there’s a bit of an odd odor now - wonder if circuit boards begin smoking if not put in properly.
It would help to know exactly what the hell you did.
A vague “something” isn’t much use.
Typically, laptops have Batteries, Hard Drives, and Optical Drives as separate modules, most everything else is part of various circuit boards.
A picture of the component you are talking about and how it sits relative to the notebook would be useful. Your utterly vague description of the component is almost useless.
Why were you trying to remove it?
There could be a cable or something stuck under the board. Not a good idea to have it bent like that. If you completely removed a screw you might have lost a spacer underneath.