My kid dropped my laptop!

I have a Dell Inspiron 8600, I turned it on today and it was acting really strange, dinging and windows closing right after I opened them. I then noticed that if i put any weight on the right side of the laptop under the keyboard i get tons of dinging and beeping, it's like something got loose under the keyboard. If i am really careful, i can use the touch pad to move the mouse, if i click anything is get strange reactions.

After some questioning to the kids, I got a reply from my 8 year old that he had it in his lap Saturday morning (when i was sleeping in) and the cat scratched him and he dropped the laptop from the couch to the hard wood floor! He said it rebooted when he dropped it (not a good sign).

So I got some canned air and blew under the keyboard, but it didn't help. It is not under warrenty anymore so I was thinking about opening it up and taking a look. I have opened up desktops before and added modems (in the old days) and network cards and harddrives but never a laptop.

Any suggestions?

 

Yes...be careful and pay attention to what you are doing. Dell should have a service manual on the site for the 8600 that will include instructions to take it apart.

1) Don't force anything...if it takes too much force that isn't how to do it.
2) Touch the RAM, CPU, and Motherboard as little as possible...skin oil is bad on those parts as well as static electricity shocks.
3) Make some space to spread the components out.

That being said, I completely tore apart my old XPS M140 and rebuilt it with no trouble (I was trying to find out what was making a strange sound). No instruction manual (I didn't bother to download/print it), no help, just me and my tools. The laptop still works to this day...just think before you act and the notebook should be fine.

 

Thanks for the advice. I will probably wait until tomorrow when i am more awake to do this. Looks like i just need a small philips to get it open right?

 

Yeah philips should be sufficent. Just make sure you touch an unpainted metal surface before you operate, and just to be safe touch again periodically to make sure there is no nasty static electricity in your body.

Static electricity + components = one dead computer.

 

You may also want a flathead to help pry up some body panels, as many are pressure-fit any more.

Just be careful to not stab any components with a screwdriver (especially, say, a display). It's really easy to screw something up irrecoverably if you use too much force, and something gives way.

 

It's pretty easy, don't get nervous, just follow the steps on Dell's manual and u'll be fine. I spilled water on my laptop before. I was so scared but luckily the laptop recovered.

 

Thanks for your help guys. I opened it up today and couldn't get it all the way open, I was afraid to pull to hard. So i just blew some canned air into it and then put it back together. Then everything worked fine!