A few months back, I blogged about my broken Dell laptop. I was determined to fix it, since I spent so much money on it 6 years ago to purchase it. Read the history here and here.

The symptoms:

The battery stopped recharging. Even when plugged in, the laptop reported running on battery power. The laptop would not boot when plugged into the wall with the battery removed.

The possible causes:

Searching the web, I discovered that there are three possible causes:

1. A bad electrical cord
2. A cracked motherboard
3. An expired battery

Discounting the causes:

The bad electrical cord looked unlikely, because the green light was still working. Also the cord was not frayed.

The battery was indeed old - the original battery from 6 years ago. But the laptop was still working off the battery, so it's not like the battery just stopped working. There is a diagnostic button on the back of the battery, and it showed everything was OK.

So that left the cracked motherboard. Replacing this sounded exciting - I'd never seen the inside of a laptop before.

Fixing It: Attempt One

I ordered a new motherboard off eBay for about $100. I downloaded the laptop disassembly instructions from Dell and printed them. I got my tools out, and started taking the laptop apart.

It was easier than I expected. I was quite worried that the laptop was put together in a way that once you took it apart, it was impossible to put back together. This turned out not to be true. There were only a couple of places were cables were either glued or taped on, and so you definitely have to be gentle with this thing.

The one tip I would give is, there are a LOT of screws you need to remove, and they come in about 15 different sizes and shapes. What I did was arrange the screws on a desk in the order in which I removed them. Then when I put the thing back together, I just used the screws in reverse order. It makes things a lot easier. (Somehow, I had two extra screws left over. I don't know where they were supposed to go.)

So after I replaced the motherboard with the one off eBay, and put the whole thing back together, I plugged it back in and turned it on. I noticed two things on reboot. One, my touchpad mouse was not working and two, the battery was still not recharging. So the motherboard replacement did not fix the problem.

Fixing It: Attempt Two

So, the next logical step is to order a new power cable. Those cost about $12. (A new battery costs $125 or so, so I wanted to leave that option til last.) After some confusion with the seller, in which he apparently shipped it to the wrong address, I got my new power cable.

Plugged it in, and lo and behold, it worked! After all the motherboard stuff I did, it was the power cable. Of course, my touchpad mouse still did not work. But, oh well. Worst case scenario is that I have to use an external mouse.

Unfixing the First Attempt

I decided to remove the new motherboard and put the original back in. This meant disassembling the laptop again. I waited a little while before embarking on that journey one more time.

Last week, however, I did replace the new motherboard with the old one. This time, I also found places for those two leftover screws from last time. And I must have plugged the touchpad in correctly, because it now works.

Everything is back to normal.

I don't know what to do with this extra laptop at this point. In the time since my old one broke, I bought a new one. I might repave the old one, put some experimental OS on it (like Longhorn) and play around with it. We'll see. But for now, I have a working laptop.