How to open up Compaq Presario C500 Note Book

Disclosure : Highland Computer Solutions Las Vegas is not responsible for any damage
to your equipment, nor any personal injury caused by the below mentioned procedure. We recommend to use service manual from the manufacturer when available.


Note:
In Compaq C500, the mother board is attached to the top side ( where the keyboard is attached) of the case or shell. After all the screws are removed, screen and keyboard are removed, the bottom part of the case should be removed to access the mother board or heatsink assembly.

Step 1.
Keep the laptop upside down and remove all the screws. Remove the memory
and remove the hard drive. ( Removing memory and hard drive are pretty standard. So
we skipped them) . Also remove the wirless signal cable heads. These wires are going to the

front side through a hole and connected to the screen as an antenna. Please see the

picture marked red.




Step 2. Keyboard cover removal.
With a flatbed screw drive gently lift up the keyboard cover in the holes
below the keys marked in the picture, starting from the left side. The keyboard cover is not wired to the board. So don't worry about breaking any wires.















This is the toughest part. Once the keyboard cover is removed its pretty easy
to dismantle the rest of the unit.
Step 3: Remove Keyboard and Screen ( Below pictures shows how it looks once
the keyboard cover is removed)



Remove the keyboard screws( marked green in the above pic). Be careful
the keyboard is attached to the board with ZIF( Zero insertion force ) cable below the keyboard.
Gently remove the ZIF cable from board. Following things should be done in order.

Remove the video cable first.
The carefully pull out the wirless antenna cables.
Remove the screen screws. See the picture below. (The screws shown are on the left side.
There is another set on right side. Remove all those screws and lift the screen a little and
the screen comes apart)



There are couple of screws on the front cover . Remove them and using a guitar
pick pry into the bottom side of the case and the bottom side can be removed. Motherboard
is connected to the front side of the case. Not to the bottom side. Good luck.
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