Other Stripped Screw Removal - Dell Inspiron N4010

My girlfriend has a Dell Inspiron N4010. Yesterday, her hard drive bonked out, and shows errors like crazy, and will not boot up properly. We are at university, and as such, she doesn't have any time to spare to send it back for two weeks and whatnot.

So we thought we might just buy a new hard drive ourselves and put it in. I've done it a thousand times so why would it be a problem? So we went and bought a $50 250GB Western Digital SATA II replacement drive. No biggie.

PROBLEM. Unlike 90% of laptops out there, hers has no door/panel leading to the hard drive.


I looked at the instructions, and it turns out just about everything needs to be removed to access the hard drive. I need to actually take out the motherboard, flip it over, and then remove the hard drive.

Fine. I have the manual right in front of me and I removed all the required screws, used a flathead to wedge out the palmrest and the keyboard, and here we are, exposed motherboard and all.


To access the hard drive, I need to remove a bunch of screws to get the motherboard out (as well as the optical drive and system fan) and literally pull it out and flip it over. ONLY THEN can we access the hard drive, which is fastened in by 4 screws on its own little steel cage thing.


I'm unscrewing all the screws that fasten the board to the frame. I get to the last one, next to the system fan, and......it's not screwed in correctly. The screw is lopsided and jammed. I try my best to pull it out but my tools end up stripping the screw. This one is different from all the other screws (it is smaller) and it was not screwed in correctly by the manufacturer.



So now I'm stuck. I cannot remove the hard drive because of this one measly screw, that wasn't in correctly to begin with.

Thank you, Dell, for making it utterly impossible to access the hard drive on your laptop. This laptop is in fact a replacement for the first one that my girlfriend got, which contained a faulty screen.

NEVER have I seen a laptop in which it is this difficult to reach the hard drive. I would expect this from a MacBook, but not a dell. I have removed notebook hard drives dozens of times on other laptops without issue, but this one seems to be impossible.

Anybody have any tips on removing this screw? Also, I realize opening the machine voids the warranty, but a Costco guy (she purchased this from Costco) sanctioned the disassembly of this machine, thus making me believe that we could argue that this can still be replaced under their warranty.

BUT how would they know that I opened up the laptop to begin with? The stripped screw? Everything else is fully assemblable and I don't think you could tell that this thing has been opened otherwise.

Before I turn this over to Costco, would any of you have tips to get this thing out? The piece it is screwed on to seems to be made of plastic, so I thought what I may be able to do is use a soldering iron to cut it open and pull the screw out, though I think there may be some risk involved. I don't want to damage the motherboard.

It took 15 minutes for me to pull up the instructions and get this whole thing open, and still I cannot get to the hard drive. On my ASUS laptop, it took all of 18 seconds for me to remove the hard drive door and pull it out.

Why, Dell? So that you can profit a tiny bit from us sending it back? I feel like this would cause losses because it pisses off the user so much. Plus, how the hell would they fix this if they can't get the screw out either? They'd have to toss this whole thing and give my gf a new one.

UPDATE: I was finally able to get the motherboard off.

The solution wasn't really far from the soldering idea that I had originally. Instead of melting away the brass nut that the screw was attached to, I sawed it off with my pocket knife's built-in hacksaw. After removing the board, I cleaned everything off very carefully.



The newly-freed motherboard, with a brand new 250GB WD Scorpio now installed.


Boy is she gonna be happy!

 

sucks... ok gimme rep

 

A few ideas:

A small pair of needle nosed mole grips might be able to clamp pn the head of the screw, alowing it to be rotated.

or

If you're feeling particuarly brave, cut a slot in the head of the screw with a dremel, and then use a normal flat head screw driver to get it out. Don't slip!

Failing those ideas, can you not just jam the next size tool up into the stripped out head?

 

First try to find a bit that fit the screw perfectly. Then apply lots of force downwards while veeeery gently turning the screwdriver. If it slips ever so slightly, stop and push harder downwards. If this fails try using a torx bit that fit snugly into the hole. Make sure that there is enough support underneath the screw so you don't crack anything. You may have to apply well over 10kg of downward force.

If that fails, do as GOO said, use a pair of pliers. Be very careful when doing this, though.


If all else fails, just drill out the head. Use a 3-4mm drill bit and gently drill it out. You already have a perfectly centered hole, so the risk of slipping is minimal. Just be very careful to remove the metal residue after. and DON'T even think about using a vacuum cleaner for this. Compressed air and a toothbrush should do the job.

Edit: Don't use the soldering iron- trick. You'll just solder the ground wire to the motherboard, and most screws in laptops are screwed into brass nuts that is press fitted into the plastic. (Except for Fujitsu Siemens who apparently thought that self tapping screws into plastic were a good idea. )

 

I was going to say pretty much the same as GOO, you could try and find a tiny screw extractor, Are you sure there isnt a slide out tray on the side of the body at all, Even the seriously old lappies ive had have had easy access to the HDD!

 

Fire! and lots of it...

This is the reason I never buy Dell. I have an old Inspiron machine when I was 15/16 and when I went to put another hard-drive in all kinds of dodgy hardware issues came to light, it's pathetic how a multi-national company can use such shody materials.

 

90% of the people that buy dells won't take them apart, so id it worth loosing profit for that small 10 percent?
especially as the is the higher quality business class?

 

Even then the 90% complain of hardware faults! I know they're 100% over what they used to be back in the day. But the fact is that you can't expect every component to be the same! I could build 100 of my home-rig and everyone would be different!

 

Thanks so much guys. I was finally able to get the motherboard off.

The solution wasn't really far from the soldering idea that I had originally. Instead of melting away the brass nut that the screw was attached to, I sawed it off with my pocket knife's built-in hacksaw.



The newly-freed motherboard, with a brand new 250GB WD Scorpio now installed.


Boy is she gonna be happy!

 

Remember to clean the cooler while you have it all apart.

 

Stripped my Dell Inspiron 9300 down loads of times, cleaning out fans (3 cats), removing milk when our toddler decided to 'clean' my keyboard, upgraded the CPU. Never had a problem with it yet.

I've also changed the HD several times; it's in a caddy - undo 2 screws and it slides out.

 

ARGH! A typical Dell construction.
My old, but still good enough Dell laptop just forked up it's third harddrive. (I use the computer at work, as a ship-electrician, and it falls down and suffer some awful vibrations almost every day) so to get to the harddrive you have to dismantle EVERYTHING... so annoying.
thinking about getting a PATA SSD-drive this time....

 

I have this same laptop and replaced the HDD in it today. Do you have any advice on how to get the keyboard connected again? There are 3 little ribbon connectors to the mother board and I can't for the life of me get my hands in between there to connect them.