Laptop REPAIR

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Your laptop is important in your day to day life, and we get that. That’s why we offer 2-business day in-house (our store) repairs. 

Whether you have an Apple, Acer, HP/Compaq, Lenovo, Sony, Dell, Fujitsu, MacBook or anything else, we can assure you that we can fix most problems that arise.  Call Computer Idiot® at (805) 650-5981 and tell us what the issue is, or come in for a FREE diagnostic check.

If your laptop stops working and  has no power, it can seem like there is no clue what is wrong with it. But we can diagnose and fix problems with laptops that have no power. The power problem may be caused by a faulty power button, a broken DC jack, RAM that has gone bad, a fried motherboard, or a short-circuit in any of the other components of the laptop. The only way to know for sure is to disconnect and reconnect each component until we find the one that is causing the problem.   Once this is done, we can replace the faulty part and get your laptop working again.

Screen Replacement – 

  Sometimes laptop screens get damaged through a fall or other kind of accident. In other cases, the laptop may display no image even though the screen looks fine. To replace a laptop screen, we first remove the plastic covers or tape covering the LCD’s screws. We then unscrew these screws and pull out the LCD frame. Once we’ve done this, we can remove the LCD from its frame, unplug it from the inverter, and pull it out of the laptop. We can then install a new LCD by reversing this process. Whether your screen has a small crack or widespread damage, we can replace screens fairly quickly.

Screen prices vary considerably based on the type of screen used in the laptop. We can provide an estimate based solely on the model of the laptop but for an exact quote we'd ask you to bring the laptop in. We generally need to open the laptop and get the part number off the back of the screen in your laptop to provide an exact quote.  If your computer was made within the last 4-5 years this repair should be worth doing – if you own an older machine you might want to give us a call before you bring it in – it might just be time to by a new one

The Achilles heel of a laptop is often the DC jack. If someone trips on the wire while you have the power adaptor plugged into your laptop, it will most likely cause damage. We all know what DC jack is, just perhaps not by this name. It's a tiny metal box that is soldered into the motherboard and that provides all of the power to your laptop. You plug your power cord into this jack whenever you try to charge the battery or run the laptop off an electrical outlet. As you can imagine, if the DC jack goes out, you won't be able to charge your laptop. In some laptops, the DC  jack is soldered directly to the motherboard. The reason DC jacks tend to be so weak is because there are only three or four small pins holding it in place.  Any sideways pulling of the DC power cord while attached to the laptop can dislodge a pin, breaking the solder around it. 

Does your laptop show any of the following symptoms: 

• Laptop battery not charging or intermittently charges?  

• The charge light goes on and off?  

• The laptop sometimes loses power when moved?  

• The laptop gets hot around the power jack area?  

Time to replace the power jack.  The power jack on a laptop is located on the inside of your computer; it’s where you plug in the AC adapter cord for your laptop. This is a common weak spot for many laptops and if the power jack becomes damaged it will need to be replaced.

A few things you should know about DC jack repair.   

• Your laptop’s DC jack is more fragile than you might think  A lot of our customers are surprised when they learn that the tiny plug that powers your laptop is a fragile piece of hardware. While it is true that it has a pretty simple job, the problem is that it gets a huge amount of wear and tear.   Every time you pull the power cord out of your laptop, the jack housing is placed under strain. This is especially true if you have a habit of yanking it out roughly or trip on the cord regularly!   

• Your laptop’s DC Jack is hardwired to its motherboard.  The next thing you should know about the DC jack is that is soldered into the motherboard. In other words, it is directly connected to the brain of your computer.   While it has a simple job to play in making your laptop work, it’s directly connected to the most important part of your computer.   Which leads us to the third thing you need to know.  

• Getting to the DC jack isn’t a simple process. Even though a DC jack is a small and basic component, it’s surprisingly tricky to access.   Before repairing your DC jack, it’s first necessary to remove the outer housing, the motherboard, the hard drive and RAM along with the keyboard and its frame. It’s quite a tricky operation just to get to this one tiny component, the DC jack. 

Here’s the good news When a DC jack fries, you usually won’t have to get the whole motherboard replaced.   We have the know-how to simply unsolder the DC jack from the board and solder on a new one. This can save you significant money, time and hassle.   

If your laptop will no longer boot up, it may be because one of your memory sticks has gone bad. We can open the laptop and use a process of elimination to determine which stick is causing the problem. We can then replace that particular RAM stick, allowing your laptop to boot up normally again.   Even if your laptop memory is working correctly, you may not have enough memory to do the things you want with it. For example, you may want to play 3D games or do video editing, which are very memory intensive applications. We can upgrade your laptop’s memory so it will do what you want it to.  

If your laptop has been showing you error messages and crashing randomly, it may be because there is a problem with your hard drive. At Computer Idiot®, we can check the status of your hard drive using the S.M.A.R.T. system. If your hard drive is not in danger of failing but is still causing crashes, we can eliminate errors using check disk. We can also reinstall your hard drive’s operating system and device drivers if the hard drive is not being recognized.   If there is something physically wrong with your hard drive, we can replace damaged or loose cables, the hard drive PCB, or even the hard drive itself (SSD/SATA/IDE types).

If your laptop CPU fan is broken, your computer may cut off randomly. It may also give you an error message telling you that your fan is broken. We can remove your fan from your laptop and diagnose what is causing the malfunction.   In few cases, we can lubricate the fan and get it working again. In most cases, we will have to replace the entire fan. Either way, we can fix overheating problems on a laptop so that your PC will stop cutting off on you.  

It’s easy to damage a laptop keyboard.  You may have spilled something on it, a small child in the home may have torn off some of the keys, or the keyboard may have just quit working mysteriously. Whatever the reason for the damage, we can remove your old keyboard and install a new one so that your laptop will work correctly again.