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A recent message was received about fixing a broken laptop hinge: My laptop has a broken hinge, I was carrying it across the room and tripped on a toy and laptop went flying, it worked fine for a couple weeks no problems at all, but now the left hinge in bulging and it does not open or close properly. Is this something you would be able to repair, and if so how much do you think it would cost? I need my laptop to run my business. The response follows; Hi– It will be difficult to pin down precisely your repair cost without more information. I can look up your hinge (L/R) to get a price if you can let me know the exact model. For instance a Toshiba Satellite A105 has many sub-models; some with intel processors, some AMD. The same is true of other makes as well. If your laptop doesn’t specify a sub-model on the palmrest, look for a label on the bottom. The bulge you mentioned is likely from the broken hinge staying in one position while the other opens & closes. With luck, you will only be replacing the hinge, which can normally be done within an hour. I call on luck here because of the possibility of some other part being what broke. The hinge is usually attached to the lcd screen, the plastic frame & lid the screen is mounted in, and the base portion of the laptop. Frequently, the easy fix is to find a complete lid assembly with a bad screen (from ebay), put your good one in it, the install the entire lid. Transferring your screen to another lid assembly and installing it entirely shouldn’t take over 1.5 hours. It is frequently possible to repair some of these other parts without replacing them. Unfortunately, an accurate assessment sometimes requires exploratory surgery. I should mention that worst case scenario would be if the frame of the base portion of the computer had broken and couldn’t be mended. In those circumstances your mainboard, dvd, hard drive, etc., would all have to be transferred to another case. Here again, however, parts donors can be found in the listings of dead/for parts only systems of the same model on ebay. Please note that if your laptop comes to Affordable Laptop Service, the objective will be to keep it in your hands rather than on my shelf. We can order a part and wait until it’s convenient to install if we can determine what you need with a free examination of your laptop. Please call to arrange examination of the patient. |
