Sure, I've mentioned this before but here goes (and it does not invalidate your warranty).
1) If you have an m15x, you'll notice 6 rubber bumps around the screen. With a flat head screwdriver you can gently lift those off (they have some sticky that holds them on). What you'll then see is 6 philip type screws holding the black paneling onto the lid around the screen.
2) Unscrew the 6 screws and set aside.
3) Gently remove the plastic black paneling from the LCD screen housing. It kind of snaps in and out of place quite easily.
4) Once the black paneling is off, you'll see the full LCD screen and the hinge system that the paneling was hiding. If your hinge has damage at this point it is very easy to see, you'll notice little bits of plastic and obvious signs of stress.
5) If your system does not have obvious signs yet, that's good. But take a close look at how the hinge is attached to the chassis. What you'll see is 3 or so philip screws that screw into gold nuts. That's all well and good until you look a bit closer. What you then see (and you may need to take a flashlight and angle it from the side to look "under" the hinge) is the gold nuts are secured in place by sitting in round plastic "anchors" that are attached to the plastic chassis. The problem is these plastic anchors are prone to become brittle after a few months of normal use. The anchors crack and give way and before you know it you have the gold nut coming loose from the anchor, thus negating any solidarity they provided. The result is as the pictures show: the screen pops off in that corner, gold nuts and silver screws fall out, little pieces of the brittle silver plastic fall out, etc. As more and more of the anchors fail (I believe there are three) the damage gets worse. When all three fail, you will be unable to open or close your laptop.
Thus, the fact that the hinge is anchored in plastic is the inherent design flaw in the system that has caused the failures myself and others are reporting.
As I have stated before, I have worked in the IT industry for 14 years and manage thousands of systems for businesses. We take apart our own systems here and repair them with parts from the vendor to decrease downtime of our customers (not having to wait to ship back to the vendor, etc). So I know what I'm doing when it comes to dismantling a computer. And like I said, I have never, ever, ever seen a hinge that was anchored in plastic. Its always a solid piece of steel or a high quality aluminum/magnesium alloy.
The right hinge seems to fail first, possibly due to the added stress of the video card generated heat.
I'd be happy to post pictures and show you guys each step of this procedure and the plastic hinges, but in less than 5 minutes you can take a look at your own m15x and discover the issue yourself.
Glad it's Friday!!
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
