The new laptop I bought to replace the one I gave my daughter got a cracked screen a couple of years ago right after the warranty ran out. I replaced it myself but still couldn't get it to work so I ended up selling it (more on me and laptop repairs in a minute). With the money I got for it I didn't have to put in much extra to get a refurbished laptop that worked. Fast forward to this summer when my daughter bounced on our bed like a trampoline and bounced my laptop right off onto the floor. The bottom line, a laptop that kept giving me error messages when trying to use Windows XP.

Instead of paying what I was told would be a few hundred dollars to have it fixed I decided to try to fix it myself. After calling Microsoft I was told it was a hard drive issue so I bought another one for something like $50. It still didn't work. Many hours of phone time later they amended their analysis and told me it was instead a motherboard problem. Since a motherboard is about $200 and might not even solve the problem I decided I would try to sell the laptop for parts and buy something cheap to replace it since I have an Apple iMac that I use for most applications, and only need the laptop for 2 programs that I need when I travel.

That meant that in the interim I needed a working Windows machine. I thought my daughter's VERY old laptop would fit the bill. The problem is it has a broken DC power plug. That same problem happened a year or so ago and an engineer from the station fixed it. 6 months later it happened again and I talked a computer repar friend into fixing it. This time I didn't want to ask either of the same 2 people to fix it again so I decided to buy the part for a few bucks and try to fix it myself instead of paying the quoted $165 for an old machine that barely even works at all.

Figuring out how to dismantle it was tough. There were parts that at first I couldn't figure out how to release without breaking, but eventually I got it all taken apart. There were dozens of screws of all different lengths that I carefully labelled and stuck to a piece of paper. Another part of my desk held separate piles of boards, drives, and various electronics that I wasn't sure what they were. Finally I got the motherboard out and took it to solder the new part on. Luckily a friend offered to take a couple of minutes and do that part for me. So far things looked good. Julie kept telling me she couldn't believe it and that there was no way it would work when it was put back together. Then I pushed on the motherboard to seat it properly and my finger slipped and broke off what I thought might be a capacitor. I put things together without it since I wasn't sure when I went and tested it.

Believe it or not things sort of worked. There wasn't a light on the front to show if it was on, and I had no mouse but otherwise things seemed fine. I plugged in a usb mouse and things really worked well. But, I was worried that the missing capacitor would cause problems eventually and that maybe that was why the mouse didn't work (I knew I could live without the light). So, instead I took everything apart again and asked an expert if they could tell were the capacitor belonged. I knew within a 1/2 inch were it had come from on the board. It got put back where it belonged and I headed back to assemble things again. This time the light worked but the mouse still didn't. So I took it apart several more times and kept trying to reseat the thin strip that I thought controlled the mouse. I never could get it to work so finally I decided to just use a plug in mouse and close everything up. I was pretty happy with things until I got home and the keyboard wouldn't work.

That meant I had to take everything apart again and double check the keyboard control strip. I reseated it and it worked so I again assembled everything and put it all back together. This time everything worked perfectly except the mouse. So, 4 hours later I saved myself $150 and had the satisfaction of knowing I accomplished something that everyone else thought I couldn't. Not that I'm naming any names JULIE.

Now, does anyone know were I can pick up a cheap laptop that I will barely use since I have to give this one back to my daughter in a few days ?