how to replace acer aspire 5100 hard drive

I have an acer aspire 5100 and it had a fatal system error which has happened to me before but i just reinstalled windows and it was fine. But this time i cant even boot the computer with the vista disk or start it in any safe mode. So i called someone and they said i had to replace the hard drive. i got most of it apart but i cant seem to get the top plastic layer off where the key bored is. i even got the screen display off. can someone please help me.

 

You don't need to disassemble your 5100 to access the hard drive. You shouldn't be talking anything about keyboard or screen display .

The hard drive bay is on the bottom of the notebook, there are 2 panels on the bottom of your notebook one is the larger thermal panel which you take off if you want to replace ram or your processor or want to clean the intake fans.

The second and smaller panel(near the front of the notebook there should be a "rubber square" on the top of the panel) is where the hard drive is located, unscrew that panel and remove it then you will be able to remove the hard drive.

Of course before you do any of this make sure your notebook is unplugged and the battery is removed.

 

Wanna' try again there?

Removing the unscrewed panel allows one to LOOK at the hard drive. If you don't know the other steps, you shouldn't tell the OP'er what HE shouldn't be doing, or talking about...

Any body know how to pull this HDD?

 

on my old acer, I undid the small panel, then there was one screw on the caddy, I undid that and pulled the plastic 'handle/strip' to pull it away from the motherboard, then I undid the 4 screws on the caddy, installed the new one, and reversed the steps. all worked good, they have relatively the same chassis so... it should work the same.

 

for the Aspire 3500 series, assuming same design for most older acer's.

Step 1: remove power cord, and battery
Step 2: flip computer upside down
Step 3: find the hard drive bay, there might be a cylinder like icon near it, and it will be close to the front of the system.
Step 4: remove the screws, likely 2 screws.
Step 5: on removing the plastic lid you will see a metallic box, with a plastic strip on top of it.
Step 6: on the side that has extra space there will be 1 or 2 screws, undo these
Step 7: pull the plastic strip toward the side of the computer that has space open and the whole caddy should pop out.
Step 8: take the 4 screws out of the side of the caddy and the hard drive will just slid out.
Step 9: just put new one in the same way the old one was. and reverse the steps and put your recovery disk in to install your OS.