Worth fixing an old laptop

Depends, Battery and Power Adapter could be up £60. New HDD around £50-60 (depending on size) dvd drive probably £20.

You have to say to yourself is this laptop worth £140 second hand? If the answer is no then i'd leave it.
 
If you can find a generic power adaptor for £20, 2nd hand HDD for £20-25 (sata or IDE?) and £20 for the DVD drive probably just about worth it, if you need a basic office/web/media player machine.

Battery only if you need to use it as a laptop. :)
 
I'd buy an external USB dvd writer, they're cheaper than specific laptop model, the internal ones are often not universally fitting, because of the facia. And it's more useful in the future for other machines
 
bledd. said:
I'd buy an external USB dvd writer, they're cheaper than specific laptop model, the internal ones are often not universally fitting, because of the facia. And it's more useful in the future for other machines
Click to expand...

That's not strictly speaking true. You can remove the fascia from the old drive and fit it to the replacement drive.

I have made a few laptops good from a number of duff laptops. This involved upgrading the dvd drive to a DVD writer and transfering over the HDD and RAM too. Although I had these laptops/parts as spares, not sure I would have bothered had I needed to pay for parts.

As mentioned before a "multi" ac adapter would be more useful. Also you must check wether the HDD is Pata or Sata and make sure you get the correct RAM for the mobo.

When you have a price for all the parts you'll know wether it's worth the money and your time to get it working. Why is it missing soooo many components? Do you know it even runs if you added what's missing?
 
Well as an update, i managed to get spares fairly cheap i think.
- 80gb 7200rpm hdd £22
- 4GB Ram for £8
- Internal dvd drive for £9
- Power adapter for £10

It's now sat here running ubuntu quite responsively.
 
Angst said:
Well as an update, i managed to get spares fairly cheap i think.
- 80gb 7200rpm hdd £22
- 4GB Ram for £8
- Internal dvd drive for £9
- Power adapter for £10

It's now sat here running ubuntu quite responsively.
Click to expand...

nice result for <50 quid

what you gonna use it for tho?
 
notthemilkybark said:
Open it up and give it a good hoover. Those laptop fans collect dust like a mother****er. (Mine got to the point where playing Minecraft would overheat it enough to cause a bluescreen.)
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Thekwango said:
ohhhh toasty! you tried open it up and blasting a bit of compressed air round it. could be dust build up in and around vents/fans etc


edit: beaten to the punch!
Click to expand...

Blasted compressed air in through the vent but tbh it seems fairly clear.
 
Completely disassembled it this morning and replaced the thermal paste which made all of 4c difference.

Edit: it seems then fan works for about the first 5 minutes and then shuts off for some reason.
 
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Hp's have very poor airflow, My old Compaq Presario V6600 melted parts on its motherboard twice and then i got sent vouchers as they ran out of replacement parts.

Call it a win for <£50 if it lasts a year or 2 its been a cheap time
 
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