Evga e-geforce 7600 GT, blown capacitors

What a poor product. I have never seen capacitors blown like this on an electronic device. Specially on something this new and lightly used. Never again EVGA, i guess.

Toshiba Satellite L505d Sound, USB, WIFI, Media Card Reader not working? Here's the solution

So, I picked up a Toshiba Satellite L505d-LS5006 from a computer store clearance sale. Bought as a working, but requires fixing laptop. The sound, usb, media card reader and wifi would not work on this machine. I installed correct drivers, but these devices wouldnt even pickup in device manager. Same with Ubuntu, no response.

With a little bit of searching. Particularly here.

http://forums.toshiba.com/t5/Audio-Sound/no-sound-usb-on-satellite-l505d-gs6000/td-p/172564/page/13

Found out out that there is a pair of capacitors, Numbered L4519 right underneath the mouse pad, that get either cracked or sheared off the motherboard because of the mouse buttons being pressed.

If you disassemble your machine with this problem, you will see that there is absolutely no space between the mouse pad circuit bottom and the motherboard. Hence, if you hold the laptop from a corner, and have a mouse button pressed, it's going to put quite alot of pressure on these capacitors. So much, that they get sheared off the board.

So, if you develop this problem. Open the laptop. Inspect the condition of the capacitors. They might be broken or gone completely. The advised and working solution is to reconnect the capacitors, which is highly unlikely, since they are a millimeter wide or so. Hence, Solder ball the connection. And it works.

I just got done solderballing mine. On start up the devices were recognized and the drivers installed. Please do make sure that the remanence of those capacitors are no where to be found on the motherboard  or they will short something else.

LCD to LED Conversion - Fixing a CCFL LCD screen with a dead backlight with an LED backlight panel

Alright now it's time for another ghetto-tech laptop screen repair tutorial. LED to LCD conversion method.

This method will also work if all you're doing is replacing the bad CCFL backlit screen with a new LED backlit screen. Then just plug in your laptop display cable and inverter cable directly to the converter cable. And use the converter cable to power your display and backlight. The following method will let you be able to use a working CCFL backlit screen on a smashed LED backlit screen casing.

       Lets say you have a 15.6" LCD screen with a dead CCFL backlight and a smashed 15.6" LCD with a good LED backlight. Well, you'll be able to put them together to make one good working screen. Here is what you need.

1. Good 15.6" LCD Screen with dead CCFL backlight
2. Bad/smashed/cracked 15.6" LCD Screen with good LED backlight
3. LED to LCD Converter cable with a "Toshiba" attachment. (Basically an inverter for LED Screens)

This is the cable you need, it has the additional inverter type thing

   Carefully pry open the casing of the dead backlight screen, and dispose of the backlight panel. Keep the LCD panel and the circuitry on the back.

 

  
   Carefully pry open the casing of the cracked LED backlit screen. Now this LED backlit screen you cant just dispose the LCD panel, because it is connected to a board that also provides power to the LED backlight. You're gonna have to tear out the connectors for the LCD, keeping the wiring to the LED backlight and the whole circuit on the back. Then dispose of the cracked LCD panel.





 
 
 

  Now, if you pay attention here, an LED backlit screen casing is upside down. Hence, you wont be able to get the wiring for the LCD panel over the flat edge. Because when you put the border back on it will just slice the cables. You're gonna have to assemble it in a way that the LED backlight is now on the top and the wiring for the LCD panel goes comfortably between the tabs at the botton.




 
 
Yellow screwdriver points to the point of attachment of the LED converter cable, black screwdriver points to the point of attachment of the original laptop display cable. Tape off the display cable attachment that comes with the converter cable. 

    Now, using this converter cable, we're gonna connect our laptop's display cable only to the LED backlit screen's circuit, so all we get there is the back light. And to the LCD panel circuit, so we can have display.



The screw driver points to the point of attachment for the backlight wire, on the right is the connector you're gonna tape off and NOT USE.



Screw driver in this one points to the only connector you're gonna have to connect to the motherboard. 


   Put it all together, put the casing cover from the LED backlit screen and there you go. When you turn it on it should work like this one is. You might not be able to control the backlight brightness, but hey, full bright doesnt hurt. Be very careful putting the screws back on the frame, there are two attachment points where the ribbon cable is over the screw hole.

Gateway W340ui Dead IDE Controller, alive with Ubuntu

So, I just bought a Gateway W340ui laptop in pristine condition, but dead ide controller. Which means it will not recognize a hard drive or a cd rom. BUT! it recognizes USB bootable devices. AND! will also boot from a media card, i.e. SD card. YAY!

All i did now is go to:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/14912/create-a-persistent-bootable-ubuntu-usb-flash-drive/

and learn how to make a USB bootable drive. Same process also applies to SD card. So if you have a laptop like this one, that doesnt recognize a harddrive or cd rom in the bios settings, take out the hard drive and CD rom cause they're not gonna work in it any more any way and plug in one of these SD cards. 2GB atleast. There you go, you have now a working laptop with a slightly different OS and can still do quite alot with it.

That website above describes the process. It's easy.

get this program

Universal-USB-Installer

And the latest Ubuntu iso from a torrent site, and you're done. 

Unlock Dell Bios -595B Master Password

So, you have a dell laptop. It goes through post and loads windows. You can also access the bios but the setup is locked, hence you cant change boot sequence etc. Well, here's what to do about that.

On the Unlock Setup screen, your service tag is displayed on the bottom with a "-595B" at the end. Go google "dogbert's 595-B keygen". It is a small utility that generates master bios passwords, master hdd passwords for dell laptops. You will also find a website linked to his blog that just allows you to enter your service tag with -595B at the end and it will generate the bios master password for you. It might show you a few passwords, try them all, it should work, and it does, it has for me every single time. Locked setup or locked system, Dogbert's crack works on every dell.   

Cracked laptop screen but good backlight, or good screen but dead backlight

If you have a laptop with a cracked screen but good backlight, or a good screen with dead backlight, find the other. You will find plenty sellers on craigslist with laptops that have the same size screen as yours, but dead backlight or cracked screen. Find the one that works for your situation. This way you can fix your laptop screen cheap as chips instead of buying a new screen for a 100 bux or more.
 
You can disassemble the screen. A laptop screen is made in two completely different pieces.

1. Screen where the image appears

2. Backlight

The backlight is what makes most of your screen. It's a flat sheet of clear or offwhite plastic which illuminates when the CCFL or LED bulbs underneath it are turned on. The whole casing of the laptop screen is primarily backlight with image screen pasted on top. The image portion of the screen is another sheet of semi-opaque plastic with electronic trickery and magic on it, which can not be seen until it is illuminated from behind, hence backlight.

Lets say you have a dell laptop with a 15.4" screen that has a dead backlight. And you just out of no where happen to find a dell laptop 15.4" screen that has a working backlight but cracked imagery. All you have to do really, is take a blade, cut out the tapes surrounding your screen housing, carefully pry open the housing, separate the image screen from the backlight, it should just come right off, with the circuitry on the top back, and place it on the screen that has a working backlight. There you go, put the casing together, you're done. Dispose of the cracked screen and the dead backlight, they are no further use.

This trick will only work when you have two of the same sort of screens, i.e. either CCFL backlit screens or LED backlit screens. LED backlit screens do not have inverters, hence no where to plug the CCFL backlight plug, same with the  CCFL backlit screens, they do not have the connector for an LED light strip, they have an inverter.

Some HP or Toshiba screens will light up and work fine with your dell CCFL backlight casing.

Hp laptop screens on dell laptops

I have found that most HP laptop screens, I've experimented with the 15.4" ones, can be connected to dell laptops which sort of take the same connector on the back, but the backlight behavior is weird. Some of these HP screens will light up very dim on all settings, and some will light up dim then bright then dimmer and brighter as you try to adjust brightness.

Some dell laptop screens from Inspiron 1521, 1525, 1520 are all compatible with each other, just replace the whole thing with the inverter included. Inspiron 1521 and 1520 also use the same screen cables. Have the same screen chassis, hinges, etc. The ones with the webcam are plug and play.