things

My friend has this old busted Lenovo G40-80. She's had it since 9th grade. Her main issue with was that it's unable to go past the boot screen. I asked for it hoping to give it another chance at life only to find out that there were bigger hardware issues than I expected.

This was my first time ever disassembling a laptop. This is really irresponsible, but I didn't do dedicated research prior to this. Maybe I opened a few videos on disassembling this model but they just played in the background as I proceed to unscrew screws at my own pace and order. The way I handled that parts was indeed amateurish. I may have committed some deadly sins here and there. But in the end, I think I was able to diagnose what was wrong and create some temporary solutions so my friend can use the laptop for longer without shelling out thousands of money.

The reason why I suddenly had this urge to tear down the laptop myself is that my own laptop's hinges broke. It is the third time this has happened. I wanted to repair it myself; I didn't want to spend thousands more on this laptop. But my parents didn't believe in my abilities. After all this laptop costed us ~40k PHP. They didn't want me to accidentally make it worse. To be fair, the repair guys gave my laptop what it really needed. I personally was plotting to device a workaround to the hinge issue even if I could already tell it needed some parts replaced—just to save money. They completely replaced the hinges and the top cover with ones from a refurbished unit. The 3.5k we spent on it was only slightly overpriced unlike expected. I only hope now that it won't ever break on me ever again.

I wanted to see if I could have made those workarounds myself had I gotten ahold of a little screwdriver at that time. It's not very nice but I took advantage of my friend's lack of knowledge on these things and convinced her to let me check out her "junk laptop" and perhaps repair it for her, and if I'm successful, I get it for free. Or not. That's fine too. I just wanted to have fun. I had this feeling her laptop wasn't as broken as she made it out to be.

(Unfortunately I did not take any pictures of the disassembly.)

First, I needed to check if the screen cables and the hinges were fine. That was the main reason why I wanted to tear down the laptop. The last time I turned this laptop on, I was struggling with the hinge until suddenly the screen went completely white. I panicked and put the laptop away and never touched it again for a month until now.

I found that the hinges' issue is similar to what happened to my laptop. The screwholes for the hinges broke off from the plastic back panel. When I received the laptop, the hinges were already fucked up and wide open. As I was unscrewing the back panel, I removed two screws that were completely unrelated to the hinge mechanisms and the thing popped open in relief. I think that's bad. The hinges prying the case open caused cables to go places it shouldn't be in. Thankfully the screen cable is fine, just misplaced which is maybe what caused the screen to go white back then.

Getting a new back panel is too expensive. I was doing this repair for free (for fun). The laptop's body and screen are completely detached from each other, if not for some little plastic that's sandwiching the hinge. Friend said she kept the laptop perpetually open because of the hinge being impossible to shut without any uncomfortable plastic cracking noises. As a quick and cheap temporary solution, I decided to loosen the hinges so it would be easier to open and close. At least if the hinges were loose enough, my friend can very gently close the laptop without causing the plastic case to pop back open. It will no longer be able to hold the screen open but my friend said she's fine with having to prop up the screen forever. It's not like she'll bring it with her, since it didn't even have a battery anymore.

My solution to loosen the hinge helped a lot. The plastic case still cracked a bit and shifted some ports but it wasn't as difficult to open as it was before. It would benefit from being looser though. I plan to tear it down again to loosen the hinge more (and return a screw I forgot to put back).

Aside from that, I also couldn't do anything on the laptop because the keyboard was broken. It was as though a couple of keys were being held down despite nothing pressing it. My friend gave me her keyboard as well because of this issue (I used my own because hers was old and really dirty). I figured no harm will be done if I left the keyboard ribbon cable disconnected.

Another major problem was the software stuff. I tried installing Linux on this laptop but it couldn't find the disk drive. Inside is a 512 GB SSD, but it just would not register on any of my live ISOs. My friend suspects the issue came from the laptop being randomly unplugged while it was being used. That could damage an SSD. Another time she said she got a "blue screen of death" which I'm guessing means it encountered some RAM issues. I don't know how to test if the SSD or the RAM are working nor do I have the equipment I think I need, so I can't do much about that.

I didn't want to return the laptop unusable. I did want to revive it. It's a good thing my friend bothered to provide me with a 16 GB flashdrive in case I was able to backup her files. The plan was to install an operating system into the flashdrive, which is possible thanks to Linux. I chose Puppy Linux for it since it's a very small distribution meant for cases like these.

I encountered some issues with the bootable drive not being able to boot, returning with an error saying the .sfs file in the ISO cannot be found, or the bootable drive not being read by the laptop at all. The solution was to change some settings in the BIOS and enable Legacy or something of the sort. Eventually I was able to install Puppy Linux (Ubuntu Fossa) onto her 16 GB stick anyway. You would think her laptop was junk the way my friend would describe her issues with it but it's completely fine. I believe it has an Intel i5-5200U processor and 8 GB of RAM. It's unfortunate that her SSD is busted because I feel those are pretty fine specs (given that the OS is Linux).

I proposed to my friend that if I successfully revive the laptop (i.e. make it useable again), I would get it for free. She initially agreed but it seems she changed her mind later on because it was an unfair deal. I knew that. I'm fine with not getting it for free. I just wanted to mess with it, open it up, install Linux. We didn't really talk about what happens if I end up damaging the laptop even more though. I'm not sure if I caused extra damage, but we'll just not talk about that. I'm glad to get my friend's laptop working again. My friend thought it was impossible and that her laptop was junk, but I was able to do some easy workarounds that will let her use it for web browsing and work for a few years more. She says she'll use it until she buys another laptop in three years.

This laptop, the Lenovo G40-80, was very fun to open up. I may have done it wrong but it's okay. It's one of those older models that are designed to be repairable. I'm jealous. I wish I'd known about how modern laptops have terrible build quality before I bought my own, and I wish I had known about Linux too; I don't need a 12th gen Itel processor or 16 GB RAM! And better yet, I wish I had more confidence in myself to repair my laptop on my own.

I have never opened a computer ever before but I tricked my friend into giving me hers so I can play with it a bit and build some confidence to mess with electronics later on. Everything was fine in the end. Now I crave opening laptops even more...