Tutorials HardwareStep By Step Guide to Taking Apart A Netbook

Step By Step Guide to Taking Apart A Netbook

Written by Marc Roberge | 03 April 2011

In this tutorial, I will show you how to take apart an Acer Aspire One Netbook for repairs. Every time a unit comes into the shop requiring internal repairs, I like to take pictures of the process in order to provide you with an easy to follow teardown guide.

This little guy came in for repairs because the owner accidentally dropped it and lost wireless function.

Taking it completely apart wasn’t necessary as the WiFi card had simply been knocked loose and wasn’t seated properly. This fix would simply have required me to remove the WiFi protective cover on the under side and reseat the card but I wanted to check that nothing else had gotten shaken loose. It must have been quite a drop however, as you will see that the wireless card is held securely in place with a screw and pin…

In any event, here is the process to dismantling the Acer Aspire One Netbook. You will need one or two small Philips (star) screwdrivers, a small common (flat) screwdriver for light prying or preferably a plastic pry tool like the blue one in this picture.

Also, when dealing with a large amount of small screws, I recommend using one or several small containers to keep your screws organized or, as in this case, a strip of adhesive tape that allows me to organize the screws and keeps them from rolling off.

I didn’t have to access the LCD panel but, if you needed to, you would simply pry off the 6 rubber pads on the front LCD panel and remove the exposed screws. This would give you access to the panel and LCD cable, should they need replacing or repairs.

Whenever you are working on a laptop or netbook , always remember to remove the battery before ever taking your screwdriver to the unit.

With the Netbook bottom side up, remove the three protective covers. These cover the Hard Drive, RAM and Wireless Card respectively. There are two screws to a cover and they DO NOT come out. Simply loosen them and remove the covers.

Removing the internal Hard Drive, either to strip down your Netbook completely or to replace a defective Hard Drive, is a simple matter of removing the screw securing it in place and sliding the drive out and up.

As we are looking to completely strip this Netbook, you will also need to remove the bezel screw in the Hard Drive bay as shown in this picture.

The RAM (memory) module simply pops out by spreading the clips that hold the stick in place. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture, but if you are attempting this at all, I’m assuming you’ve removed or replaced a stick of RAM before.

The following picture is of the wireless card and slot. This is where this particular unit was experiencing problems – although the picture shows the card AFTER I had reseated it. To remove the wireless card, you would remove the screw securing it in place. Again, for a complete teardown, you will also want to remove the bezel screw indicated by the tip of my screwdriver.

Aside from the two bezel screws removed (1 in the Hard Drive bay, 1 in the Wireless card bay), you have to remove the 12 other screws shown with arrows. They are all the same size.

Now we flip the unit over and proceed to remove the rear hinge screws. These are also concealed behind rubber pads (one on either side).

You should now be able to remove the plastic hinge covers. Use a bit of light prying if necessary.

Removing the keyboard is a bit trickier but is necessary for a complete teardown or if you ever have to replace it. There are 4 spring loaded clips at the top of the keyboard. Push them in lightly with a small flat tool.

There are also 2 plastic clips (one on the left and one on the right) that are not spring loaded. You need to pry up the keyboard lightly on either side. DO NOT pry the keys off of your keyboard. As I said, it’s a little tricky, but once you get the one side loose from it’s clip, the keyboard should come away easily.

When you flip the keyboard towards the front of the unit, you will see it’s ribbon cable and socket. Use your fingernail to gently pry the “brown” clip of the socket upwards. It’s hinged and should simply flip up, releasing the ribbon.

While you’re at it, you can release the Touchpad ribbon, again using your fingernail to flip the “brown” socket clip.

With the keyboard removed, you will now see several screws. There are some black and some silver screws. You will note the black ones are marked M2-L5 and silver M2-L2.5 – which should help you remember where each screw goes. Remove all of these screws.

Run your plastic pry tool or fingernail all around the bezel edge to snap the top bezel loose.

It should come away easily and you are done. You now have access to the motherboard and it’s components as well as the inverter, WiFi switch and everything else. Simply follow this tutorial in reverse order to put it all back together.