Day: December 5, 2013

Here’s the teardown of Ivi’s laptop, annotated for those who might not recognize such innards.

So Ivi comes home with her laptop bearing a broken, detached screen hinge.  She had reported this a few days earlier, so we started a troubleshooting exercise remotely.   After her college IT guys told her they could not fix the thing, she was directed to a downtown Portland shop who noted the absence of screws for the hinge, telling her it was unfixable.  As a last ditch resort, I asked her to bring it home for Thanksgiving, and I would have our own tech guy, Gary, at my workplace look at it, in the meantime prepping one of my MacBooks for Ivi’s use upon returning to school.

Over two days now — yesterday and today — Gary has been trying to deal with the thing.

First, the problem:  loose screen hinge and separated top fascia panel.

 
Gary determines that the two (deeply embedded) retaining screws are indeed missing, but that a more or less total dis-assembly will be required to get to the screw positions and access the hinge contact points.

 

The missing screws fit into sockets like these, but the threads on the broken side sockets are destroyed.

 
No luck so far finding replacements or cannabalizing another computer.  So Gary contemplates potential solutions, perhaps involving custom fabrication, superglue or some combination thereof.   Stay tuned.