I have a dv8000t CTO unit, dual drives (120GB each). I'd like to replace my second drive with a larger-capacity drive. The HP specs say that the interface type is ATA-5. Newegg sells ATA-6 laptop drives (2.5") of 250GB and 320GB from Western Digital. I understand that ATA-6 drives are backward-compatible with ATA-5 interfaces.
Do you folks foresee any problems in replacing my 120GB ATA-5 "D" drive with one of those larger ATA-6 drives from Western Digital? I'm pretty new at this (I'd never think of taking my dv8000t apart like Sledgehammer did a while back!), so any advice would be appreciated! Thanks, guys!
I have a dv8000t CTO unit, dual drives (120GB each). I'd like to replace my second drive with a larger-capacity drive. The HP specs say that the interface type is ATA-5. Newegg sells ATA-6 laptop drives (2.5") of 250GB and 320GB from Western Digital. I understand that ATA-6 drives are backward-compatible with ATA-5 interfaces.
Do you folks foresee any problems in replacing my 120GB ATA-6 "D" drive with one of those larger ATA-6 drives from Western Digital? I'm pretty new at this (I'd never think of taking my dv8000t apart like Sledgehammer did a while back!), so any advice would be appreciated! Thanks, guys!
If you have any questions in regards to the dv8000t being disassembled feel free to post here.
Thanks so much for all the info and especially the pics. I'm slowly beginning to understand what's what. I am still left with a few questions, though:
I may have to replace the fan in my EX177AV (which is either a dv8000t or a dv8300, depending on which document you look at). Is it possible to remove just the fan from the fan assembly (which seems to include the heat sink) to clean/lubricate/replace it and then put it back in the fan assembly. Or, is it so integrated with the heat sink that the whole thing has to stay in one piece? It seems to me that if, as some other forums have suggested, WD-40 or 3-in-1 on the fan shaft will help, I'd rather apply it in the backyard with the fan totally removed rather than risking soaking the heat sink or any other parts in lubricant.
hi all
i'd like to thank everyone and especially Sledgehammer for all the information i found here, a friend of mine gave me a T2500 and i'm going to try and install it in a few days, hope i won't break anything ^^
cya
Thanks so much for all the info and especially the pics. I'm slowly beginning to understand what's what. I am still left with a few questions, though:
I may have to replace the fan in my EX177AV (which is either a dv8000t or a dv8300, depending on which document you look at). Is it possible to remove just the fan from the fan assembly (which seems to include the heat sink) to clean/lubricate/replace it and then put it back in the fan assembly. Or, is it so integrated with the heat sink that the whole thing has to stay in one piece? It seems to me that if, as some other forums have suggested, WD-40 or 3-in-1 on the fan shaft will help, I'd rather apply it in the backyard with the fan totally removed rather than risking soaking the heat sink or any other parts in lubricant.
Thanks,
Greg.
The fan is removable from the heat spreader. From what I remember 3 small screws held it to the assembly. But overall don't count on removing the entire heat sink as it seems pretty secure to the motherboard.
Hello,
Now I need your assistance. I removed every visible screw from the back of the laptop, plus HDDs, battery and RAM, but everything is still quite solid and nothing moves... What do I do now please ?
Thanks in advance.
There's usually a small bevel, basically a strip of hard plastic, between the keyboard and the LCD which snaps in place covering the screws that hold the keyboard in place. Normally you need to pry this bevel up and remove the screws, then the keyboard to get at the last few screws holding the palm rest and the back of the laptop together. Since I don't own this particular laptop I can't say this is the case 100 percent for sure... but it has been the case for the dozens of other laptops I've taken apart. It should be pretty easy to tell though if there is a bevel there.
Thanks !
I removed that panel and there are screws under it, and now the keyboard moves a little.
But the screws are actually holding the pieces of metal to which the screen is attached ! And since I can't unplug the screen yet, I don't want to remove them at this time...
Besides, only the part of the keyboard that is near the wireless switch can move upwards a few millimeters, the sides of the KB are still like glued to the rest of the laptop.
Are there screws under some keys of the KB ? Or should I just pull it away by force (:-/)
I will post photos in a few minutes so you guys can see what I exactly did.
OK I removed quite everything (I finally noticed that the KB can sliide), now I can see the whole mainboard but I can't remove it ! Should I unclip something ?
One more question, how will I be able to replace the optical drive connector ? I don't know since it blocks the removal of the front panel...
[edit] added photo
I think that this laptop is pretty hard to take apart, I took apart a DELL 15"4 (don't know the model) and it was way easier because the MB is at the bottom of the laptop. Therefore you don't have to remove it if you want to change the CPU.
I'm afraid I don't know where to go next. All the laptops I've torn down had it so at this point the CPU would be exposed and you could replace it. I think we need a dv8000t expert in here.
Well, it's done. I finally had the guts to pull that MB hard and get it out of the chassis. I've installed the new CPU, it seems to work fine (I did not make any stress test yet, but since the new one is only 200MHz faster...)
I have several little issues with the keyboard, I may have fucked up something :
- right Shift key is very hard to hit
- the area around the Power button is a little higher than the rest (the video cable might be misplaced but I couldn't do better...)
There is also the wifi that does not work under Windows (wtf ??) and the 2-3 first boots did not work : I had 2 beeps + freeze one time, one time it simply froze, and one time it froze when entering BIOS oO"
Having the laptop running again is like going out of a long tunnel
[edit] cr*p, i'm doing a torture test right now, CPU temp il 75°C and the fan is at maximum speed, and when I press the part of the laptop where the rad is, temp goes down 10 degrees... Something went clearly wrong :/
It may sound crazy, but do you think that I could bend up the 4 holes of the CPU rad a little, so that the whole rad goes lower when I put the screws back ? This way the contact will be better between the CPU and its cooling system...
The fan is removable from the heat spreader. From what I remember 3 small screws held it to the assembly. But overall don't count on removing the entire heat sink as it seems pretty secure to the motherboard.
Thanks. I'll save this post for future reference.
I tried the compressed air from OfficeMax and used the house vacuum, with a new bag, on the grill. The fan is now quieter and, I can't be sure, but I think the temps have dropped a bit. So immediate crisis averted. I'll try to remember to do this more often from now on.
I've gotten a lot of good info browsing this site. Thanks so much for sharing.
I've recently had a problem with my dv8000. A month or so ago I installed Windows 7 and after a few weeks noticed I was getting some black screen errors. The laptop screen would turn black (the backlight was still on, just no display) for a minute or so then return to normal. I assumed it was a problem with Windows 7 (the black screen of death as it's called now) and began updating drivers and searching for a fix.
There were no problems with this black screen for another week, until yesterday. The screen went black, and stayed that way for many minutes. It went black again, and stayed that way for an hour. Upon restoring my screen, I noticed some red horizontal lines and then it went black for good. I can turn on the computer and I can hear familiar Windows sounds play through the speakers, but I cannot see anything. Not even the startup screen, not even the BIOS, nothing at all. This leads me to believe the problem is with the hardware itself.
I searched some more online and see that many people have problems with the GPU in their dvxxxx line laptops. I believe this may be my problem. I really do not understand the difference between a GPU, a chipset, and the graphics card. But it seems that this problem I have requires replacing one of those. My questions then are:
1) What do you believe the problem with my laptop is?
2) Is it possible to fix this problem by replacing a part of my laptop?
3) What part do I need to replace?
Some information to keep in mind:
I cannot see anything on the screen. Not even a faint image. Not even any of the text normally displayed at startup.
The backlight still works, and I can increase/decrease the brightness. In fact, the laptop is still functional, I just cannot see anything.
I have not yet tried using a separate monitor, I will as soon as I have the opportunity.
EDIT:
Using a monitor did not work. Nothing would appear on the screen. I connected it using a VGA cable.
My laptop has a video card NVidia Go 7600.
No display on laptop's screen, windows sounds working, and no display on external monitor: you gpu (aka. Graphic card) is surely fried. As far as I saw when taking mine apart, the gpu is soldered to the mainboard, therefore it is impossible to replace it. You will have to use remote desktop to use your laptop, there may be others ways as well. Sorry for you.
Comments
I have a dv8000t CTO unit, dual drives (120GB each). I'd like to replace my second drive with a larger-capacity drive. The HP specs say that the interface type is ATA-5. Newegg sells ATA-6 laptop drives (2.5") of 250GB and 320GB from Western Digital. I understand that ATA-6 drives are backward-compatible with ATA-5 interfaces.
Do you folks foresee any problems in replacing my 120GB ATA-5 "D" drive with one of those larger ATA-6 drives from Western Digital? I'm pretty new at this (I'd never think of taking my dv8000t apart like Sledgehammer did a while back!), so any advice would be appreciated! Thanks, guys!
Thanks, mertesn! I'll give it a shot!
When I boot up my screen has some faint horizontal lines. Feels like a shielding issue. Any thoughts?
I'm dreading tearing this back down, maybe I can find out where those extra 3 screws went.
Thanks so much for all the info and especially the pics. I'm slowly beginning to understand what's what. I am still left with a few questions, though:
I may have to replace the fan in my EX177AV (which is either a dv8000t or a dv8300, depending on which document you look at). Is it possible to remove just the fan from the fan assembly (which seems to include the heat sink) to clean/lubricate/replace it and then put it back in the fan assembly. Or, is it so integrated with the heat sink that the whole thing has to stay in one piece? It seems to me that if, as some other forums have suggested, WD-40 or 3-in-1 on the fan shaft will help, I'd rather apply it in the backyard with the fan totally removed rather than risking soaking the heat sink or any other parts in lubricant.
Thanks,
Greg.
i'd like to thank everyone and especially Sledgehammer for all the information i found here, a friend of mine gave me a T2500 and i'm going to try and install it in a few days, hope i won't break anything ^^
cya
The fan is removable from the heat spreader. From what I remember 3 small screws held it to the assembly. But overall don't count on removing the entire heat sink as it seems pretty secure to the motherboard.
Now I need your assistance. I removed every visible screw from the back of the laptop, plus HDDs, battery and RAM, but everything is still quite solid and nothing moves... What do I do now please ?
Thanks in advance.
I removed that panel and there are screws under it, and now the keyboard moves a little.
But the screws are actually holding the pieces of metal to which the screen is attached ! And since I can't unplug the screen yet, I don't want to remove them at this time...
Besides, only the part of the keyboard that is near the wireless switch can move upwards a few millimeters, the sides of the KB are still like glued to the rest of the laptop.
Are there screws under some keys of the KB ? Or should I just pull it away by force (:-/)
I will post photos in a few minutes so you guys can see what I exactly did.
[edit] pics added
One more question, how will I be able to replace the optical drive connector ? I don't know since it blocks the removal of the front panel...
[edit] added photo
I think that this laptop is pretty hard to take apart, I took apart a DELL 15"4 (don't know the model) and it was way easier because the MB is at the bottom of the laptop. Therefore you don't have to remove it if you want to change the CPU.
I have several little issues with the keyboard, I may have fucked up something :
- right Shift key is very hard to hit
- the area around the Power button is a little higher than the rest (the video cable might be misplaced but I couldn't do better...)
There is also the wifi that does not work under Windows (wtf ??) and the 2-3 first boots did not work : I had 2 beeps + freeze one time, one time it simply froze, and one time it froze when entering BIOS oO"
Having the laptop running again is like going out of a long tunnel
[edit] cr*p, i'm doing a torture test right now, CPU temp il 75°C and the fan is at maximum speed, and when I press the part of the laptop where the rad is, temp goes down 10 degrees... Something went clearly wrong :/
It may sound crazy, but do you think that I could bend up the 4 holes of the CPU rad a little, so that the whole rad goes lower when I put the screws back ? This way the contact will be better between the CPU and its cooling system...
Thanks. I'll save this post for future reference.
I tried the compressed air from OfficeMax and used the house vacuum, with a new bag, on the grill. The fan is now quieter and, I can't be sure, but I think the temps have dropped a bit. So immediate crisis averted. I'll try to remember to do this more often from now on.
I've gotten a lot of good info browsing this site. Thanks so much for sharing.
Greg.
There were no problems with this black screen for another week, until yesterday. The screen went black, and stayed that way for many minutes. It went black again, and stayed that way for an hour. Upon restoring my screen, I noticed some red horizontal lines and then it went black for good. I can turn on the computer and I can hear familiar Windows sounds play through the speakers, but I cannot see anything. Not even the startup screen, not even the BIOS, nothing at all. This leads me to believe the problem is with the hardware itself.
I searched some more online and see that many people have problems with the GPU in their dvxxxx line laptops. I believe this may be my problem. I really do not understand the difference between a GPU, a chipset, and the graphics card. But it seems that this problem I have requires replacing one of those. My questions then are:
1) What do you believe the problem with my laptop is?
2) Is it possible to fix this problem by replacing a part of my laptop?
3) What part do I need to replace?
Some information to keep in mind:
I cannot see anything on the screen. Not even a faint image. Not even any of the text normally displayed at startup.
The backlight still works, and I can increase/decrease the brightness. In fact, the laptop is still functional, I just cannot see anything.
I have not yet tried using a separate monitor, I will as soon as I have the opportunity.
EDIT:
Using a monitor did not work. Nothing would appear on the screen. I connected it using a VGA cable.
My laptop has a video card NVidia Go 7600.